Broken Hearts
by Mizvoy
Summary: Complete! Chakotay thinks he knows Kathryn Janeway. He knows who she is, but he doesn't know why she's the way she is. These stories are in the Night and Day episode addition universe. Post Endgame
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I know these guys belong to Paramount. I promise to return them undamaged. No infringement intended.

Summary: Chakotay thinks he knows Kathryn Janeway. He knows who she is, but he doesn't know why she's the way she is. These stories occur in the same universe as my "Night and Day" episode additions.

Note: To help the reader keep track of the dates used here, according to the Stardate calculators I've found, Voyager returned to Earth in "Endgame" on December 22, 2377.

Broken Hearts

Chapter 1

by Mizvoy

_"Guilt always hurries toward its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie." Lawrence Durrell _

Chapter 1

June 22, 2378--San Francisco

"Kathryn did you a favor, Chakotay." Admiral Owen Paris sat down on the stool next to Voyager's former first officer and gestured the bartender for a beer before he glanced at Chakotay. "You want another?"

"Why not?" It was after midnight, and the chatter and music from the promotion party in the nearby reception room was muted in the dark, deserted bar. Chakotay waited for the beer to arrive and then lifted it in salute. "Here's to Starfleet's newest admiral."

Paris raised his beer, as well. "Admiral Janeway. It's been awhile since I've heard that name and rank together." Paris sipped the beer and wiped the foam off his upper lip with a napkin. 'Since before Kathryn's dad was killed, she's been determined to make admiral. I never doubted for a minute that it'd happen sooner or later."

"I'm so happy her dream's come true." Chakotay hated that he sounded bitter about it. He gave the older man a look, remembering the cryptic comment he'd made as he sat down. "You said Kathryn did me a favor. What favor?"

"The favor was that she didn't become romantically involved with you, Chakotay. In every assignment she's ever had, there was some poor chap on the crew who fell for her, sometimes more than one. It was bad enough when she simply ignored him, but when she would consent to an involvement . . . well, let's just say that the fellow had a hard time letting go when she inevitably moved on."

Chakotay laughed, hoping the blush on his cheeks was hidden in the darkness of the bar. "What makes you think I didn't turn her down?"

"Don't kid a kidder, Chakotay." He chuckled as he took another long pull on the beer. "You loved Katie, even if you don't want to admit it. I listened to most of your logs, you know, and I heard your voice when you mentioned her name. I've been around the block a few times." He leaned back on the stool and crossed his arms. "Maybe Seven is an adequate replacement, but Katie has a place in your heart and always will. You never really stop loving someone."

"Sir, are you drunk or just determined to provoke me?" Chakotay was struggling to control his anger. In spite of the admiral's strong support during their debriefings, Chakotay was incensed that he would intrude uninvited in his personal life and ruin a much-needed moment of peace. "If I tell you to mind your own damned business, will you throw me in the brig?"

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Commander. For what it's worth, I know she respects you. She says you are the ideal first officer, and from Katie, that's high praise. Besides, the 'turned-down-by-Janeway club' contains some pretty powerful men." Paris sighed, and, for the first time, Chakotay understood why the admiral was in the bar sharing a beer with him.

Chakotay's eyes widened in surprise. "You loved her, too."

"She was my student!" Paris tried to look indignant, but then smiled and ran a hand over his bald head. "And she was a good friend's daughter, twenty years younger than I am, and under my command. But so beautiful, so completely unapproachable. You know, there's something especially alluring about forbidden fruit."

"So you never acted on your feelings?"

"No, thank God." Paris took a deep breath and leaned on the bar, resting his head on his hand. "Of course, I fell for the younger Katie. The way she was before."

"Before? Before what?"

Paris seemed oblivious, lost in a memory. "People don't remember how different she is or what she was like before. She functions so remarkably well that they forget what she's been through. Or maybe they never knew the details."

"What the hell are you talking about, sir?" Chakotay demanded, wondering if the older man was coherent. "Are you referring to the fact that she was stranded in the Delta Quadrant for seven years?"

"That was just the latest in a series of mind boggling ordeals, Chakotay, any one of which would've left a lesser person in shambles." He lifted the beer, studying the bubbles that were rising in it. "Did she ever talk to you about her father?"

Momentarily confused by the sudden change in the conversation's direction, Chakotay closed his eyes to think. They'd had dozens of conversations about home and family, but her dad specifically? He shook his head and glanced at the older man. "She talked about her parents once in awhile. I remember her telling me that she saw her dad in a vision once, but she soon realized that it was an alien who took on his form in an attempt to influence her. That's about it, as I recall. I thought she was closer to her mother."

"Her mother was and is the greatest single influence in her life. Edward was gone for months at a time, and Gretchen did a magnificent job connecting with Kathryn and Phoebe, giving them the stability and home life all children need." He finished his beer and signaled for another. "Most Starfleet brats have very conflicted relationships with their Starfleet parent, whether it's their mother or father. And the ones who have two Starfleet parents, well . . . ." He took the fresh beer and frowned. "Let's just say they're usually troubled and leave it at that."

"So Kathryn's relationship with her dad was complicated?"

"I'd say so. She desperately longed for his approval and his attention. Even as a tiny girl, she did everything she could to get him to notice her. She went out of her way to please him, to win his praise, to spend a few minutes in his company. I thought Edward played into it too much. He thought it was a game, a way to control her, but to Katie, it was deadly serious."

His face clouded before he continued. "I remember after one conference, I accompanied Edward to his house on our way back to San Francisco. I was a young commander, and we were picking up a book or drawing he didn't want sent through the comm system. As we walked up to the house, Katie came running out to us, 'Listen, Daddy, listen,' she said, and then rattled off the eights and nines of her multiplication tables at a blinding speed. Edward just brushed her aside, saying, 'Later, Golden Bird. Don't interrupt Daddy when he's busy.'" Paris paused then, obviously remembering the moment with regret.

"Golden Bird?"

"A term of affection." He dismissed the question with a gesture. "I remember how her face crumpled; her whole body wilted in despair. Instead of winning his approval, she'd disappointed him and had been chastised in front of a stranger. He didn't say a word about her accomplishment. I doubt that Katie was much more than four years old." He took another sip. "How old were you when you learned your eights and nines?"

Chakotay laughed. "Actually, I'm still working on some of the nines."

"I know what you mean," Paris smiled. "Anyway, we went into the house, picked up the item Edward wanted, had a quick cup of coffee with Gretchen, and left in a rush for the office. As we were walking away, I looked back to see Katie watching us out of her upstairs bedroom window, still rattling off the times tables, faster and faster, tears streaming down her face. He'd forgotten to listen to her. We both had."

Chakotay looked away, trying to imagine a small red-headed Kathryn Janeway standing in her window as her father ignored her. "I always got the impression from her that her mom and dad were pretty good to her. That she had the ideal childhood."

"They did the best they could. She idolized her father, but his career always came first. That's the way it is with most of us who make admiral, you know." He sighed in resignation, his eyes sad. "Some children rebel against Starfleet, like Tom, or simply ignore it, like my girls and Phoebe. Others become obsessed with following in our footsteps, like Katie. She thought that by becoming the best possible Starfleet officer, she could earn her father's respect, attention, and love. Her dream was to work with him someday."

"But he was killed before that could happen, right? Just after she graduated from the academy?"

Paris nodded, "She hasn't told you, then. I can't say I'm surprised. She tends to put deeply emotional memories behind her. Just like Edward, she has an amazing ability to compartmentalize her life and keep focused on her work in spite of her personal problems." He took a deep breath before he continued. "Edward was developing a new tactical ship designed to render the Cardassians' technological advances ineffective. He was killed when the prototype ship crashed during a test flight. Katie was with him."

Chakotay's head snapped up. He stared at Paris in disbelief. "Kathryn survived the crash that killed her father?"

"That's right, although the fact that she was with him was never reported publicly, much less the severity of her injuries. Nobody really knows what happened exactly, whether Katie was piloting the ship or how she managed to survive. In fact, the circumstances of the crash were classified. The press reported that Admiral Janeway died in a training accident."

"That's why I don't remember hearing about it." He thought of the nights he spent looking through Voyager's data base in vain, hoping to find some details about her father's death. "Is the accident still classified?"

"Yes, it is. Some of his innovations are still under study, even twenty years after his death. I've heard it said that the ship was sabotaged by a Cardassian spy. Others think there was an illegal component being tested, like a cloak, although I doubt that very much." He shrugged. "Whatever happened, Edward was killed and Katie was severely injured. She was in rehabilitation for weeks and depressed for months. I never expected her to return to Starfleet. I didn't think she'd be able to handle the physical demands of the job, much less the stress."

"My God." He remembered the agony she'd gone through after destroying the Caretaker's array, her recurring desire to sacrifice her life for the good of the crew. "She suffered from survivor's guilt."

"She probably still does. As soon as she returned to duty, she switched from science to command and nothing has slowed her down since. Not even seven years of exile." Paris gestured at the vid screen hanging over the bar. The news report showed pictures of her promotion to admiral earlier in the day. "Look at her face, Chakotay, look at the guilt in her eyes. She can't let herself fail. She'd be letting Edward down as well as the crew members she lost in the Delta Quadrant. She's driven to succeed to repay the debt she feels she owes them."

"A debt that can never be repaid." Chakotay nodded. "Of course. I see it."

Paris finished his beer and slapped Chakotay on the back. "I'm still haunted by Katie, and she was never more than a subordinate to me. How much worse would it be if she'd ever returned my affection?" He looked toward the noisy reception room. "Even so, I wish there were something I could do to help her find happiness. I wish I could help her forgive herself and finally move on." He heaved a great sigh, drained his beer, and said, "I'd better get back in there. Just be glad you didn't get tangled up with her emotionally the way the rest of us did."

Chakotay watched the older man as he left the bar, waiting until Paris was gone before he said to himself, "But that's just it, Admiral. No one escapes Kathryn Janeway."

He sat alone in the deserted bar thinking about Kathryn. In his arrogance, he'd assumed that she had told him everything important there was to know about Kathryn Janeway, but now he knew that she had only told him what he needed to know. He had always been aware that she kept secrets, of course; so did he. But their off-duty friendship had been open and honest and their banter normal and friendly, so he had assumed that this hidden part of her life was inconsequential, perhaps an embarrassment, a disappointment, or minor failure.

Now he knew that her secret had been momentous--survivor guilt, feelings of remorse and shame that could be particularly destructive, revealing themselves in any number of ways. Some people forfeited their personal hopes and dreams in order to live a life worthy of the deceased person's ultimate sacrifice, while others put their lives on the line to exact revenge at any price.

He knew the power of the emotion, because Chakotay himself suffered from survivor's guilt. He'd left Starfleet and joined the Maquis in a search for atonement after the Cardassians had destroyed his family's home world. There had been times when he had wanted to die rather than continue to struggle against the pain of living with the memories, when he'd gone into battle with the silent hope that he would be killed.

He felt a rush of compassion for his captain, who must have spent the last twenty years struggling with the same smothering sense of failure and blame that he had. No wonder she had been so nonjudgmental of his resignation from Starfleet. No wonder she had never said a critical word to him for joining the Maquis.

An hour later, he was still sitting at the bar, nursing yet another beer. He looked up to find the bartender facing him. "It's closing time, sir."

Chakotay glanced toward the reception room where the party was probably winding down, suddenly remembering that Seven would expect him to escort her home.

"What's the damage?" he asked, draining the last of the warm, flat beer from the mug.

"The admiral who was in here earlier said to bill him."

"I'll have to remember to thank him." Chakotay left a few credits for a tip and turned to leave. Much to his surprise, Kathryn Janeway stood in the doorway peering into the shadowy bar.

"Chakotay?" she said, stepping into the dim room. "Are you here?"

"I'm right here, Kathryn."

She stopped still, obviously amazed to see him. "This is where you've been hiding all night?" She walked up to the bar and stood facing him with fire in her eyes. "We've been looking everywhere for you. We even had the hotel page you. Didn't you hear it?"

He shook his head. "You know how I am about things like that. I was probably oblivious to it."

"You always heard the hails on Voyager," Janeway said as she glanced at his civilian attire, "But, then, you aren't wearing your commbadge, are you?"

He shrugged. "After the ceremony, when I stopped by my quarters to change, I guess I forgot to pick it up."

"That explains it." Janeway softened her stance. "Did you sneak off because you were upset about something?"

"I didn't 'sneak off,' Kathryn." The bartender cleared his throat, a gentle reminder of his need to close the bar, so Chakotay stood up and began to gently shepherd Janeway toward the door. "The truth is that I needed to get away from the noise and the crowd for awhile, and it was so quiet and peaceful here . . . I guess I lost track of time."

She fell into step beside him, her anger evaporating as she listened to his explanation. "I know what you mean. I've been surrounded by so many people for the past six months that I'm just about ready to scream. I never thought I'd miss the solitude of Voyager the way I do."

"You were looking for me? Was there a problem?"

"You could say that." She laughed as they headed down the hallway. "Seven drank several glasses of the punch, oblivious to the fact that our intrepid Tom Paris had spiked it with vodka." She rolled her eyes. "It wasn't until she climbed onto the grand piano and began singing along with the band that we realized what had happened."

Chakotay shook his head in disbelief. "Her infamous intolerance for alcohol."

"She wasn't at all interested in getting down, either. We were looking for you, thinking you could take her home, but, when you were nowhere to be found, the doctor stepped in and took her to the clinic for treatment and overnight observation."

He stopped and rubbed his face with his hands as he laughed. "You'd think she'd know better than to drink punch when Tom's around. All things considered, the doctor is probably a better choice to handle her intoxication than I am."

"I'm sure he is, too." They arrived in the party room to find it totally deserted. Kathryn looked around in despair. "I was afraid of this--I was counting on Phoebe sticking around to help me get my stuff home."

"I get the hint," he said with a chuckle, imagining her dragging all of her bundles down the two blocks to the transport station. "I'll help you."

She gave him a brilliant smile and then spent the next few minutes getting organized. Several attendees had given her gifts, and she struggled to get a grip on them. "Maybe the hotel can store some of this," she groaned.

"Here," Chakotay said, relieving her of the largest bundle, "I'll get this one and that bag over there."

"Thanks. If I'd thought ahead, I would've had the hotel transport them for me."

"My pleasure, Admiral." He offered her his arm, looking forward to having her all to himself for a few minutes. They had spent less and less time together in the last six months, and he missed the intimacy of their friendship and their long, leisurely talks.

"It's going to take me awhile to get used to answering to that rank." She leaned into him as they walked out of the building and down the street. "I've worked toward this for so long, but now that the time's here . . . I'm going to miss captaining a ship."

She'd said this before since the news of her promotion had broken, but before he'd always thought it was false modesty. Now, in light of what Admiral Paris had told him, he wondered if it were closer to the truth than he'd realized. "You feel that way after being Voyager's captain for seven years?"

"Yes, even when those seven years feel more like twenty-one." She grew thoughtful. "It's just that I enjoy being 'out there,' exploring on my own, developing a sense of family in the crew. The admiralty means eternal meetings and countless hours behind a desk."

He stopped and stared at her back as she continued to walk away from him for a moment. Perhaps she was accepting this promotion because she thought her father would want her to do so. "If you want to explore space, Kathryn, all you have to do is turn the promotion down."

Janeway stopped and looked back at him, her eyes sparkling with humor at his suggestion. It was a particularly beautiful evening, with a warm breeze and the fragrance of flowers from a park across the street. "Who in his right mind would turn down a promotion to admiral?" She shook her head at the suggestion. "You've been talking to my mother."

He was stunned that someone else close to her had questioned her motives. "Your mother thinks you should have turned down the promotion?"

"She thinks I'm taking it for the wrong reasons. There's been at least one admiral in each of the last three generations in our family, and I'm the obvious candidate this time around. She thinks I should find my own goals in life, like Phoebe."

"Is it possible that she's right?" He imagined her as a small girl gazing up at her idolized father, the dashing Starfleet admiral, wanting to please him, to be like him. He imagined the pain she felt to lose him just when she was ready to join him in his chosen career.

Her face was impassive, as if she were in the midst of delicate negotiations. "My goal has always been the admiralty, Chakotay. It's what I've always wanted."

He watched as she turned and took a few more steps toward the transport station before he said, "You switched from science to command right after your dad died. Why?"

She stopped, her body tense, and when she turned, it was a Starfleet admiral facing him. "I switched because I wanted to be in command, of course."

"Was that it?" He wasn't about to back down now. "Or did you switch because most admirals come from the command ranks?"

"The reason doesn't matter."

"It does if it had something to do with surviving the accident that killed your father."

Her face was completely unreadable as she stared at him. She seemed to lose focus for a moment, and when she finally regained her voice, her tone was deadly calm. "Who told you that?"

"It's the truth isn't it?" he asked, watching her face as she struggled to keep her temper. "When you returned to duty after he died, you changed to command--his specialty. Were you trying to live his life for him?"

"I bet Owen Paris told you," she said, ignoring the question and focusing instead on who might have told Chakotay about the accident. "The admiral left the reception for awhile, and it would be just like him to come into the bar and run his mouth."

At that moment, Chakotay realized that he'd been right. The details of her father's accident was the secret she'd kept from him on Voyager, the unnamed tragedy in her past that had driven her toward perfection, to achieve the impossible at all costs. His curiosity forced him to push for more information, even though she obviously wanted to avoid the subject. "Kathryn, why haven't you told me about your father's accident?"

"Because . . . ." She swayed slightly, as if she'd literally been caught off balance by his question. The look of panic and anguish on her face made him regret confronting her when she was tired and overwrought from the long day.

"Kathryn, you should have told me. I would've understood, because I've been through it, too. Losing my family is what made me leave Starfleet and join the Maquis." He took a step toward her, intending to put his arm around her shoulders in a gesture of support, but then she regained her composure and straightened up with such blazing fury that he stopped in his tracks.

Her eyes were the steely gray he'd learned to respect in the heated arguments they'd had on Voyager. It had been months since he'd seen this side of her, and he stared at her sudden transformation in alarm. "Did your family die right in front of your face, Chakotay?" she demanded, her voice a whisper.

He blinked. "You know I wasn't there. I was teaching tactics on Earth at the time. I didn't hear about the massacre until several weeks after it happened."

"So, you didn't see the terror and desperation in their eyes when they realized they were doomed?" She took a long shuddering breath. "You didn't watch them gradually disappear beneath icy waters, trapped in the smoldering wreckage of a shuttle? You didn't stand there, a silent, helpless witness, unable to do anything to rescue them?"

He was so caught up in the drama of the moment that the meaning of her words slipped past him. All he knew was that she was trembling with rage and that her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. "Kathryn, I . . ."

"Please don't tell me you understand, Chakotay, because you don't. You couldn't. You have no idea about the hell I've been through." Without another word, she spun on her heel and stormed toward the transport station, disappearing into the building before he had time to catch up with her.

"Kathryn, wait!" he cried. "At least let me give you your packages!" He struggled down the street and into the building's lobby, only to catch a glimpse of her just as the elevator doors closed. He slammed his hand on the wall in frustration, and then thought of contacting her, reaching up to tap his commbadge and growling in frustration when he remembered that he wasn't wearing it. "Damn it."

He turned and looked around the deserted foyer in dismay. He decided to have the packages delivered the next day rather than following her now, when she so desperately wanted to escape from his presence. He scolded himself for asking her about the accident before he'd had a chance to look into the details more carefully.

The accident. He pondered her inadvertent description of the crash. She claimed to have witnessed her father's death, but hadn't Admiral Paris said she'd been injured? Was it possible that she'd been conscious enough to watch her father die? He was suddenly obsessed with finding out all he could about the event that had haunted her for nearly twenty years. There must be more to the story than he suspected, and he promised himself that he'd waste no time in finding out.

He waited for the next free elevator. He knew that poking his nose into something Janeway wanted to keep private would provoke her anger, but he'd been curious about this secret event for too many years to let it go. He was willing to bet that Phoebe and Gretchen Janeway would be willing to talk about the accident. Gretchen Janeway had invited him and Seven of Nine to dinner at the Janeway home the next weekend, and, if possible, he would use that opportunity to ask her or Phoebe about the tragedy. It was, at least, a place to start.

Chakotay boarded the elevator and closed his eyes, trying to visualize the crash scenario Kathryn had described to him. He imagined a seriously injured young woman, who was immobilized with pain and struggling to remain conscious, watching helplessly as a fragment of the damaged shuttle disappeared into a watery grave, taking with it her beloved father. How it would torture her to watch and be unable to do anything to help him. And if she had seen the expression on his face as he faced death, as she claimed, what an agonizing image that would be. How it would haunt her dreams and eat away at her soul for the rest of her days.

The elevator door opened. Deep in thought, Chakotay exited and walked down the hallway toward the transport station, pausing by a large window that provided him a spectacular view of the night sky. He gazed at the stars and thought back to a night he'd spent in Voyager's sickbay just a year earlier. He had nearly died that day while caught in the graviton ellipse that had held the Mars explorer, and Kathryn had come to check on his condition in the middle of the night.

She had asked him if he knew what it was like to watch someone he cared about die. She had asked him if he had thought for a moment about how his death would affect the people he left behind. "Do you have any idea," she'd asked, her voice a whisper, "how hard it is to keep on living when your heart is broken?"

He was suddenly overwhelmed with compassion for her. How had Kathryn done it? How had she borne the stress and responsibility of a Starfleet career, not to mention serving seven years as Voyager's captain, in addition to the incredible guilt she already felt?

"How do you keep on living when your heart is broken?" he asked himself, and then, as he turned and made his way home, he recalled a well-known Bajoran proverb.

"'A broken heart,'" he quoted quietly, "'bleeds forever.'"


	2. Broken Hearts 2

Broken Hearts

Chapter 2

June 30, 2378--Indiana

Phoebe Janeway

"Well, you and Kathryn are sure fun to be around." Phoebe Janeway walked onto her mother's screened sun room and set a tray on the low table in front of the sofa. "I don't think you two have said ten words to each other since you arrived."

Chakotay looked up from the book he was reading and sighed. He had forgotten how nosy a kid sister could be, even when she was someone else's kid sister. "I thought you were going to help your mother clean up the kitchen."

"I did all she'd let me do, but then she kicked me out. She won't let me touch the Kiernan crystal--says I'm too clumsy--and insisted I come out and keep you company."

After the awkward atmosphere over lunch, with its stilted, stop-and-go conversation, Kathryn and Seven had retired to the study to go over the design of the prototype shuttle Kathryn had flown to Indiana from San Francisco. The gleaming, streamlined ship sat about a hundred yards behind the Janeway house where it literally dominated the view.

Phoebe handed him a glass of iced tea from the tray and sat down next to him on the sofa. "So, what exactly are you and Katie fighting about?"

"What makes you think we're fighting?"

"I might be an artist, but I'm not an idiot."

He laughed. "No one would accuse you of that, Phoebe."

"When I've been around you two before, you've seemed so in tune with each other that you can practically finish each other's sentences." She sipped the tea and waited for a reply.

Chakotay shifted in his seat. Phoebe was good at this casual probing, he had to hand her that. "We don't see each other as much as we did on Voyager or even during the debriefings. Maybe that's it."

"That's not it," Phoebe disagreed. "It is something to do with you and Seven? Katie has said all along that you two were an item--destined to be together. When you arrived separately today, you could've knocked her over with a feather." She took another sip of the tea and continued to study his expression for the slightest clue of hitting a nerve.

"I know Kathryn thinks that, but everything has changed since Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant." Phoebe leaned forward, suddenly quite fascinated. Oh, yes, he thought to himself, she was a consummate younger sister.

"You didn't break Seven's heart did you? Because Kathryn would be very upset to see her surrogate daughter hurt."

Chakotay nearly choked on his tea. "Surrogate daughter?"

She handed him a napkin for the tea that had came through his nose and pounded him on the back until he could breathe again. "She has very maternal feelings toward Seven and would be upset if she thought you'd hurt her.

"I have been the perfect gentleman, Phoebe."

"Katie says Seven alternates between sixteen and sixty--sometimes as wise as an adult, other times as defiant as a teenager."

"Well, that's true." He grew quiet, recalling the many times on Voyager that he and the captain had discussed Seven of Nine as if she were a youngster they were parenting together. With a shock of clarity, he wondered if he'd begun dating Seven because he despaired of connecting with the captain and because Seven reminded him of her mentor so much. It was a problem he would have to contemplate later, when he wasn't under Phoebe's intent scrutiny. "Seven has discovered that about half of the Federation is of the opposite sex, and that most of them are fascinated by her."

"She is certainly the center of attention wherever she goes," Phoebe took his glass and refilled it, handing it back to him with a wink. "It's just that Katie was quite puzzled by your disappearance from the reception last week, especially with Seven in attendance. She said you and Admiral Paris were hiding in the bar."

"I wasn't hiding. I just needed some peace and quiet, that's all."

"I'm assuming that in the seven years you served together on Voyager, you and Kathryn managed to get along with each other when you were at odds over official business." He felt her eyes studying his profile again. There was a suggestion of intrigue in her voice as she continued, "And yet today, you practically ignore each other, and the waves of tension I felt made it almost impossible to eat. Makes me think it must be something personal."

"And none of your business," he said as politely as possible. When she laughed, he gave her a long look, realizing that he'd shown his hand. "It's a long story."

She knew better than to gloat over her victory, immediately changing her tone to something closer to sympathy. "You don't have to tell me, but if you want to, I have time."

He wondered how to explain the situation, or even if he should. In the week since Kathryn's promotion, he'd had plenty of time to look for the details of her father's accident--with little success. He discovered that it was, in fact, still highly classified, presumably because the type of propulsion the admiral been designing, something called a warp thruster, was still on the drawing board. The accident had occurred just before a huge Cardassian attack that had dominated the Fednews for weeks. All he found was a small report of a test flight accident with casualties--one being Admiral Edward Janeway--whose memorial services were pending. There was no mention of the location of the crash, nor of Kathryn's name. In spite of his discrete inquiries, there were no officers around who could remember a minor accident from twenty years before.

Well, he'd thought he'd been discrete until he'd received a very terse and angry message from Kathryn that instructed him to keep his nose out of things that were none of his business. That had occurred just two days earlier. She'd ended the transmission with a thinly veiled threat, "I'll call the authorities about this, Chakotay. I mean it."

He gave Phoebe a mysterious grin. "Maybe you should ask your sister these questions?"

"Oh, I will, don't worry." She put her glass down, letting the subject drop as her mother poked her head into the room.

Gretchen perched on the edge of a chair. "I thought I'd come out for a minute while the coffee is brewing," she explained. "Is this your first trip to Indiana, Chakotay?"

"No, it isn't. I had a roommate from South Bend when I was at the Academy," he answered, conscious of Phoebe's obvious irritation at the change of subject, "but this part of the state is much different--green, fertile farmland and rolling hills like my home planet. I feel very comfortable here."

"I thought Dorvan V was a desert planet."

He smiled. "It was, but Dorvan isn't my home planet. I grew up on Trebus. My family moved to Dorvan V a few years after I left to join Starfleet. In fact, my older sister, Rianna, still lives on Trebus."

"She's your only living relative, right?" He nodded, obviously upset by the reminder, and could tell that Gretchen regretted that she'd mentioned her. "I'm so sorry about your family."

"There are times when I get very angry about their deaths." He rubbed his face with his hands. "Even after all these years, over a decade, I regret not being more proactive about the Cardassians taking over Dorvan and the other settlements. I should've left Starfleet and forced my people to resettle when the Federation withdrew their protection. Or I should've joined the Maquis earlier and been there to defend them."

Gretchen sat back and studied him carefully. "I'm not sure one person would've made a difference, Chakotay. Your people weren't about to leave their homes. And the Maquis couldn't have prevented the all-out attack that destroyed the planet. The Federation never thought something as horrible as the massacre would happen."

"Well, they were wrong." His eyes flashed as he struggled to control his temper. He stood up and walked to the edge of the porch where he gripped the railing so hard his knuckles turned white. After a few minutes, he took a deep breath and turned to face her, and she was relieved to see that his fury had dissipated. "Too many innocent people paid the ultimate price for trusting the Cardassians."

"I know, and I wish it hadn't happened." Her eyes slid to the yard. "Where did Katie and Seven disappear to?"

"I think they're still in the study discussing some modifications in the new 'Delta shuttle.'" He sighed and shook his head.

"She's so much like her father in that regard," Gretchen said, getting up and heading back to the kitchen. "Always work first. I'll be back in a few minutes."

As she departed, Seven of Nine and Kathryn emerged from the study through the patio doors and walked across the back yard toward the small ship. Kathryn's hands were in constant motion as she tried to illustrate whatever point she was making to the former drone. Chakotay and Phoebe watched them in silence, and then Phoebe said, "Seven of Nine is such an interesting personality. Katie goes on and on about her. Don't you ever get tired of her?"

"Do I get tired of Seven?" He turned to look at the Phoebe, so much like Kathryn that he often found himself staring at her in fascination--the same face and smile, but blond hair and green eyes, and not a sign of a freckle.

"Actually, I meant Kathryn."

He laughed. "No, I don't get tired of Kathryn. But Seven? There are times when I wish I could delete half of what she knows from the dozens of species the Borg assimilated. And then there are other times when I think she doesn't know enough about being human." He looked out at the women where they stood next to the ship, Kathryn leaning over and pointing a tricorder at the underside of the port nacelle. "She's constantly saying, 'According to species 498' or 'Species 2110 faced this problem.' It's like talking to an encyclopedia."

"And talking to Kathryn isn't?" She leaned back, sipping her tea and propping her feet on the coffee table. "Miss Technobabble."

"She has her moments, all right, but Kathryn is also very human, very empathetic. I hope Seven will be like that once she's had enough experience to be able to understand other people's troubles."

"Oh, Katie's had her troubles all right." She grew thoughtful. "You know, you're lucky you escaped her."

He felt his heart lurch. For the second time in as many weeks, he'd been congratulated for being rejected by Kathryn. "Escaped her?"

"She can be tenacious and relentless when she wants a man, even if the match is hopeless. Even when everyone else can see the disaster that is unfolding right before their eyes."

He was confused. "Are you talking about Mark Johnson?"

"No, not Mark. He was actually a pretty decent match for her. I was talking about Justin Tighe."

He blinked in surprise. "Who?"

"Surely she told you about Justin? Her first fiancé?"

"She had another fiancé?"

Phoebe studied him carefully, holding her glass halfway to her mouth before setting it down with a thud on the table. "She never told you about Justin?"

"I would've remembered something as significant as a fiancé."

"Interesting." She glanced out at her sister who was now scanning the shuttle's starboard nacelle. "But then, she probably didn't tell you about Dad's accident, either."

"No, she didn't. I heard about that from Admiral Paris." He was stunned to learn of the same hidden trauma in Kathryn's life from two different people. "The accident that killed him."

Phoebe nodded. "And Justin, too."

His mouth fell open in surprise. "Her fiancé was killed in the same accident that killed your father?"

"Admiral Paris left that part out, probably. Like the rest of us, he had reservations about Katie's involvement with Justin." She shrugged, picking up the glass again. "I personally thought the old goat had the hots for Katie. No one was good enough for her, as far as he was concerned, especially not a man as dangerous as Justin. He was a nonconformist, a rebel, and a tough Starfleet ranger. Paris didn't like him much, even though he's the one that rescued the two of them from prison."

"The two of them? From what prison?"

Phoebe laughed and shook her head. "You did work with her for seven years, right? Just how well do you know my sister, Commander?"

"Obviously not as well as I thought," he replied, feeling embarrassed. "None of this was in her official file."

"No, of course it wasn't," she agreed. "The accident was classified as top secret--still is. They say it's because of Dad's propulsion system, but some people think it's because the Cardassians shot Dad's shuttle down."

Chakotay's eyes narrowed. "Inside Federation space?"

"Tau Ceti, actually. But there's no proof of that as far as I know, even in the classified investigation. And her time in prison was also classified--something about the Cardassians thinking they were spying."

Chakotay was so stunned by this information that he could hardly speak. "How long was she in the prison?"

"Not long. Justin and his team of Rangers rescued them pretty quickly, and Admiral Paris got the worst of it from what I was able to get out of her later." She took a deep breath, looking out at the shuttle where Kathryn and Seven still stood talking. "But after that, she was simply smitten with Justin. She was in the process of planning their wedding when he died."

"The admiral said she was injured."

"She was." Phoebe looked away, obviously moved by the memories. "It was a rough time for Mom and me, too. And Katie." She swallowed back tears. "The physical injuries healed quickly, but the psychological ones . . . well, in some ways, she never really recovered."

"That's what Admiral Paris said."

"For awhile, I was afraid she might never continue her career. But then she and Mark met again, and he seemed able to reach her in a way the rest of us couldn't. She recovered well enough to return to Starfleet, but I never really thought she came all the way back."

He looked toward the meadow, noticing that the two women had opened the hatch and entered the shuttle. "Is that why she and Mark never got married?"

She chuckled. "He was a glutton for punishment, if you ask me. Whatever Kathryn wanted, Kathryn got. It was sickening what the man was willing to put up with from her."

"Love makes you do that."

"So they say." She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "I'm surprised she didn't take advantage of you, Chakotay."

"Advantage? You mean get involved with me?"

"She isn't above manipulating people into doing what she wants."

"Captains don't have to manipulate people, Phoebe. They just give orders and everyone follows them."

"I guess I mean that they have to convince people to trust them, to believe they really know what they're doing when it's all a big gamble. But you talked back, didn't you?" she chuckled. "Admit it. I can tell by the way Katie treats you that you did."

"Oh, really? How does she treat me?"

"She respects you, and she wants you to respect her back. If I didn't know better, I'd think she wants your approval." She looked out toward the shuttle where the two women had closed the hatch and started back toward the house, still talking. "Almost as much as she wanted Daddy's."

Chakotay choked on his tea for the second time. "I don't think so. She acts like she doesn't need anyone's approval."

"You got it right. She 'acts' that way." Phoebe straightened up, wanting to finish their conversation before Kathryn and Seven arrived on the porch. "Look, you know Kathryn, the Starfleet captain, better than anyone in the galaxy. You know how she is, but I know why she's the way she is. Losing Dad and Justin the way she did made her afraid to commit to anything but her career. She likes to keep an emotional distance between herself and others, because she just can't risk being hurt so deeply again."

He shook his head in disbelief. "Surely the counselors helped her work through all of this before she returned to duty."

"Katie's ability to handle the demands of space duty convinced the counselors that she was perfectly fine. But I knew her before, and I see that the damage is still there. After all these years, I've finally stopped grieving over the sister I lost that day." She glanced toward the yard, where Kathryn and Seven rapidly approached. "But I still hope that someday she'll recover completely. I want my cheerful, loving, spontaneous sister back."

Once the women joined Chakotay and Phoebe on the porch, Gretchen brought out coffee and pecan pie for a late dessert. Chakotay remained quiet, taking the opportunity to watch the four women interact with each other and hoping Kathryn would become more comfortable in his presence. Phoebe soon departed for home to meet her husband and sons who had spent the day with his parents in Ohio, and Seven, oblivious to the tension between Chakotay and Janeway, abruptly made her excuses and left for a weekend visit to Sweden via a prearranged transport.

Chakotay found himself alone with Gretchen, who continued a friendly conversation with him, and Kathryn, who responded with as few words as possible, and only when asked a direct question. After a few minutes, the discussion ground to a halt, and Gretchen sat quietly regarding her daughter in a very uncomfortable silence.

"Well," Chakotay said at last, deciding to leave before tempers flared, "I should make arrangements for a transport back to San Francisco. If I could use your comm system . . . ."

"Why transport," Gretchen asked, interrupting him, "when Kathryn is taking the shuttle back tonight? I'm sure she would be happy for some company."

Kathryn was blushing furiously. "Mother, Chakotay probably needs to get back right away. I'll have to take the shuttle through the landing protocols for San Francisco and then get transport back from the airport."

"I'm in no hurry," he said. He was irritated at her continued cold shoulder and enjoyed the chance to add to her discomfort for a change. She obviously didn't want to spend time alone with him, so before he relented, he decided to prolong her agony. "And, besides, I'd love to ride in the new shuttle and see what the enhancements are like."

Kathryn narrowed her eyes. "I'll probably stay on here longer than you'd like, Chakotay."

"Are you trying to get rid of me?" he joked, his eyes twinkling.

"Katie!" Gretchen interrupted, upset at her daughter's bad manners. "He's our guest!"

Before Chakotay could intervene and defuse the confrontation, Kathryn stood up, obviously angry at being chastised in front of him. "Fine, Mother. He'll ride back with me." She looked at Chakotay, initiating a conversation with him for the first time that day. "If you don't mind, we'll leave in thirty minutes or so. I need to shut down the computer in the study and gather a few of my things first."

"That's fine, Kathryn." He watched her leave and then turned to Gretchen, who was glaring at the empty doorway. "I really didn't mind beaming back, you know."

"She's been rude to you all day, Chakotay, and it's high time she remembered her manners. I don't care if she is an admiral, this is my house, and she'll treat my guests with courtesy."

He smiled and shook his head. "You know, we could've used you in the Delta Quadrant."

"I'll bet you could have," she said, relaxing a little and grinning back at him. "Enjoy your last few minutes while I put what's left of the pie in the cooler. She won't be long."

Alone for the first time in awhile, Chakotay was grateful for a few minutes of peace and quiet. He needed to think about all that he'd learned from Phoebe before he found himself trapped in a shuttle with a very angry Kathryn for the ninety-minute trip to the west coast. So she had not only lost her father in the accident, but her future husband, as well.

It was significant that she'd never told him about Justin. Chakotay knew full well that she wasn't the type to commit casually to a relationship. She had remained faithful to Mark Johnson for four years in the Delta Quadrant, letting him go only after she learned that he had moved on and gotten married. How much more devoted would she have been to the first man she truly loved? It was a miracle that she'd moved on to Mark Johnson at all.

Trauma this serious had a lifelong effect on the victim. It would be a seminal event in her character, a memory that would shape every relationship she established and every decision she made from that day forward. He sat quietly contemplating the situation until Kathryn reappeared and they bade Gretchen goodbye.

They boarded the shuttle and headed west into the lowering sun with the minimum of interaction. Thirty minutes into their flight, Chakotay realized that the only words she had spoken since they'd boarded the shuttle had been routine orders for the preflight checklist, occasional course corrections, and infrequent radio contacts with air traffic control. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but she hadn't moved a muscle in minutes.

He decided to risk fate and break the silence. "Kathryn, if there's something you need to work on, I'm sure I can monitor the shuttle in the meantime."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before turning to face him. "I was just thinking that I owe you an apology."

He blinked in surprise. Starfleet admirals seldom apologized for anything. "You do?"

"I've been rude to you today, and I'm sure I ruined everyone's visit by treating you the way I did."

"I've had more relaxing meals," he admitted, giving her a shy grin.

"Exactly." She paused a moment, as if steeling herself for something painful. "I'm not usually the type to pout and play silly games with people, so, if you don't mind, I thought we might just clear the air right now."

"All right. The direct approach has always worked for us in the past."

"I thought that we agreed years ago to respect each other's privacy."

"We did. On Voyager, we had precious little that wasn't public knowledge."

"Your snooping into my past has to stop."

He studied her face, seeing there a glimmer of fear that had been absent in even the most dangerous of times on Voyager's bridge. "What are you afraid of, Kathryn?"

She bristled at the suggestion. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"But you are. You're afraid I'll force you to talk about it, aren't you? You're afraid I'll make you think about it again, relive the experience."

She scowled and turned back to the console. "An accident that happened twenty years ago is hardly relevant today."

"A person's past is always relevant, Kathryn, because it shapes our reactions and beliefs. Besides, it explains a lot."

"About what?"

"Your reticence. Your aloofness. I thought, on Voyager, that you kept your distance because you were the captain, and I thought you were much too dedicated to Starfleet protocols. But now I see that you keep a similar emotional distance even with your friends and family. It's the way you are."

She rolled her eyes. "Please don't psychoanalyze me, Chakotay. You aren't qualified."

"I've been a Kathrynologist for years."

"A . . . 'Kathrynologist'?" The corner of her mouth quirked into a grin.

"One of the tasks a first officer faces is tying to understand the captain," he explained, giving her a dimpled grin. "You were horribly hurt in that accident, Kathryn, and not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. Loving someone brings a dangerous vulnerability, and to lose the two men who represented both your past and your future . . . ."

"Two men?" she interrupted him, turning to give him a deadly glare. "Who told you that?"

"Your dad and your fiancé died that day," he replied calmly.

She activated the autopilot so she could focus completely on the conversation. "Who told you that Justin was on the ship?"

"Does it matter?"

"As you know, the accident is still classified, and there was no mention of the other casualties in any public report." She stopped, her eyes narrowing as she realized the truth. "Phoebe!"

He shrugged in resignation. He knew that Phoebe would probably hear about this from Kathryn, but he was also sure Phoebe hadn't told him these things in confidence. "She might have let it slip."

"She has a big mouth." Kathryn gripped her trembling hands in her lap. "She had no right to tell you about Justin."

"His death affected her, too, you know. She lost a dad and a future brother-in-law that day. And she had the mistaken impression that you and I were friends."

Her head snapped up. "We are friends."

"Are we?" He gave her a long look. "I thought you trusted me, Kathryn. I thought I knew everything important about you."

"You do know me. And I do trust you."

"Yet you neglect to tell me about an accident that will haunt you all of the days of your life."

"Oh, Chakotay, I hope it won't. But it still hurts too much to remember it. I don't talk about the accident because I'm trying to forget it happened."

"Any luck with forgetting it so far?" He watched as tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. "I didn't think so. A day doesn't pass that I don't remember the devastation I saw on Dorvan V or think about the fact that my family was incinerated like worthless vermin by the Cardassians."

"Oh, Chakotay," she said, reaching out to take his hand. "I'm so sorry."

He took her small hand in both of his. "I feel just as sorry for your loss."

She sighed. "I remember Dad and Justin every day, too. You'd think that after twenty years the period of mourning would be over."

He gave her a sympathetic smile. "There are some losses that take a lifetime to mourn properly."

She was about to answer him when the console beeped a warning of their imminent arrival in San Francisco's controlled airspace, forcing them drop their conversation and focus on their approach and landing. As always, the escape into the routine tasks of their work--in this case piloting the shuttle--gave them both a moment to collect their thoughts and get a grip on their emotions.

A half hour later, they walked together toward the transport station.

"Chakotay, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the accident when we were on Voyager, and I understand why you feel hurt because I didn't. I guess I thought the captain had to be 'larger than life' to the crew in order to keep their confidence. To reveal that I'm still troubled by something that happened so long ago seemed to me an admission of weakness I just couldn't afford to make."

"And as first officer, I had to think of you as 'larger than life,' too?"

"In so many ways."

He bit back his disagreement, realizing that they couldn't change the past. "I'm not part of your crew any more, Kathryn. I want you to trust me enough to tell me anything and know I'll always be your friend."

"I hope you'll always be my friend," she reiterated, slipping her hand into his. "And you're right about me. I do hold back emotionally, because I just can't bear to be hurt again the way I was when Dad and Justin died."

As they arrived at the transport station, Chakotay stopped and took her hands in his. "I understand that you want to avoid being hurt, Kathryn, but think about ithis. We're all tempted to avoid strong emotional connections because we fear the possibility of pain and loss, but in doing so we also miss the certainty of joy."

"The certainty of joy," she repeated softly. "I'll think about that, Chakotay. And someday, I'll tell you about the accident."

"Whenever you're ready to talk, I'm ready to listen." He lifted her hands briefly to his lips, and then reached to open the door for her.

He never saw the tear that traced its way down Kathryn's cheek.


	3. Broken Hearts 3

Broken Hearts

Chapter 3

August 1, 2378--Reddig V/San Francisco

Susan Brown

The mural extended the length of the student lounge, filling the area between the plate glass windows that overlooked the quadrangle and the ceiling high overhead, creating, as it were, an artificial night sky. Perhaps that explained why Chakotay had never really studied it before. He'd been through the lounge dozens of times during his tenure as an instructor at the Academy, but he'd never taken the time to sit down and look at the mural.

He found a seat at the far side of the room where he could contemplate the painting in its entirety. At first it was just a typical blue black star field marred by strands of space dust and clouds of nebular matter. He shook his head, convinced he must be missing something, and then relaxed and leaned back in the chair. Within minutes, images began to emerge inexplicably from the paint--a starship, a Pegasus, a mother and child, a unicorn, the Federation emblem, and a vaguely familiar star system. He sat up and rubbed his eyes in amazement.

"Amazing, isn't it?" a voice said behind him.

Chakotay turned to see a Starfleet commander, probably an Academy instructor, gazing up at the mural. "Are the shapes really there?"

The commander shrugged. "I think they must be. They come from the way the paint was applied. I've counted twenty hidden designs, depending on the amount of light and my point of view. Once in awhile, when I least expect it, a new pattern hits me. I never get tired of looking at it."

"I never noticed it before."

"You wouldn't believe how many people just glance up at it and move on. It's the artist's only public work, I understand. What a shame."

"Who is the artist?"

"It's signed 'KJ,' but I've never found out whose initials they are."

Chakotay nodded. He decided not to reveal the name of the artist who apparently preferred to retain her anonymity.

He had learned of the mural two weeks earlier while he was attending a conference on Reddig V. The Federation Archeology Society had agreed to pay all of his expenses in exchange for the reading of a paper on the Mars Explorer, more pleasure than duty, and a written report on several interesting seminars once the conference ended. The trip couldn't have come at a better time.

He had finally made up his mind to leave Starfleet, really a mutual parting, and the conference would be an excellent opportunity to make some new contacts as he looked for a job. It was also an opportune time to get used to being alone. He and Seven had decided to call their struggling relationship off, and he badly needed some time away from familiar surroundings to decide what he should do next with his life, both personally and professionally.

He'd looked forward to doing some traveling after spending seven months on Earth, but he found his first trip into deep space nerve-wracking and uncomfortable. The ship's warp engine didn't sound anything like Voyager's, and he felt uneasy about the ship's reliability because he wasn't' involved in its day-to-day maintenance and repair schedules. After so many years in space, he'd grown tired of looking at the stars and found he was bored stiff with the activities provided by the cruise director--velocity tournaments, craft festivals, tours of engineering or the bridge, and informal dances. He spent most of the trip fast asleep in his tiny berth, grateful to be left alone.

Once he'd arrived on Reddig V, he had been pleased with the plush beach-front condominium and with the sporadic conference schedule that had allowed him plenty of time to unwind and enjoy the resort-like atmosphere. The weather had been warm enough for swimming and sun-bathing, and he'd found himself relaxing more than he had in years, even more than he had in the months since Voyager's return.

On the last day of the conference, he had slept late and decided on a leisurely brunch in an open air café. He had just placed his order and was watching the tourists flow past the café toward the beach when he became aware of a tall, dark-haired woman who was seated at a nearby table. She seemed to be staring at him, he imagined because she recognized him from the paper he'd read at the conference or from his connection to Voyager, and he pondered, for the first time since his breakup with Seven, whether he was ready for a new woman in his life.

He glanced at her, gauging her to be about his own age, and gave her his most friendly smile. "Have we met?"

"I don't believe so," she answered, blushing slightly at her obvious bad manners, "but I think we have a lot in common."

Intrigued, he asked, "Are you also here for the conference?"

"No, I'm here for the weekend. But, we're both former Starfleet officers." She paused. "And we both know Kathryn Janeway." She laughed when she saw the look of apprehension on his face. "Or, at least we think we know her."

He sighed, wondering when and if he would ever escape the influence of his former captain. "You served with her?"

"Not exactly. We were at the academy together."

At that moment, the waiters delivered their food, and Chakotay suggested that she join him at his table.

"I'm Susan Brown," she said, offering her hand as she sat down across from him. "And you're Chakotay, of course."

He shook her hand, and then brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Did you recognize the tattoo?"

"Your face, including the tattoo, has been plastered all over the news for months. You must be recognized all the time."

"We've been home for awhile, and the publicity is slowing down. So, you knew Kathryn Janeway when she was a lowly cadet?"

"I was in Katie's class. In fact, I was a Starfleet officer until Wolf 359."

"You were there?" He looked at her sympathetically. "What a terrible day. You were lucky to survive."

"Yes, I know. My injuries were severe enough to force an early retirement. Now I teach history on Reddig V."

"Tough duty." He smiled at her as he glanced at the holiday atmosphere.

She grinned. "Well, I live and teach in a less resort-like location, I assure you." They ate in silence for a few minutes before Susan returned to their original subject. "I lived across the hall from Katie for all four years that we were at the Academy. I felt like I knew her pretty well."

"She was my captain and next-door-neighbor for seven. Maybe we have more in common than I thought."

She laughed, putting a hand on his arm. "I wonder if she's changed. At the academy, she studied non-stop--she was obsessed with perfection. I don't think she ever slept, and I'm sure she had no life outside of her books."

"Her work habits certainly haven't changed. I had to force her to take time off from work." He pushed his pasta around on his plate. "The pressure was relentless."

"I can't imagine what it must've been like. The pressure was pretty tough on her in school, too. It's not easy being the daughter of a well-known rising star in the Admiralty. She was very conscious that everything she did or didn't do would reflect on her father."

"I guess I hadn't thought about that. At least in the Alpha Quadrant she had her family and friends to talk to, and plenty of time off duty. It was 24/7 out there."

"It must have been tough on all of you."

He grinned. "Well, she tried her best to do it all and take all the responsibility on herself. 'There can only be one captain,' she always said. She held herself apart from the crew to maintain that 'aura of mystique' the commander is supposed to have, and I know she was pretty lonely."

"Ah, yes. The inscrutability of command. She used to imitate the way her dad would lecture the family about it during dinner. It was really funny, but I always felt sorry for her. She was so driven to be the best, to do the right thing."

"Most of the time she succeeded."

"But, Chakotay, she also paid a price for that success. At the academy, she readily sacrificed fun and freedom to work for the highest honors possible." They were quiet awhile before Sue went on. "Did she paint?"

He remembered the amazing work she'd done in the Voyager's daVinci holodeck program and the occasional easel in the ready room. "She painted once in awhile," he admitted. "Less and less as the years passed."

"She has real talent, you know. Some people say she's more gifted than Phoebe." She saw his skeptical look and smiled. "You don't believe me, because Phoebe's a professional artist, but Katie was just as gifted. Maybe even more so."

"Oh, I know she has talent; some of her stuff is amazing. But she told me she deliberately chose science and math over her painting."

"Of course, she told you that. She probably even believes it. The truth is that 'Daddy' didn't approve of the fine arts much. Phoebe painted anyway. But Kathryn wanted to please him, so she naturally focused on science and math."

Chakotay remembered some of the amazing paintings he'd seen on Voyager's holodeck, wishing that they could have been preserved. "Too bad none of her work is on display."

"You're kidding, right?" She gave him a wink. "The mural above the student lounge at the academy's Enterprise Hall was done by Katie during the spring semester of her first year at the academy. She couldn't go on the usual summer cruise because she was recovering from an injury she suffered when the scaffolding failed. When her dad found out that she was missing the cruise because of something as frivolous as a mural, he really blew his top. I don't think she ever took another fine arts class after that."

"The mural in Enterprise Hall?"

"You were ahead of us in school, weren't you? Maybe you never had a chance to see it."

He tried to remember the lounge from his years of teaching at the Academy, but finally gave up. "If I ever saw it, I can't picture it now. Can you describe it to me?"

"I could tell you about it, of course, but I don't want to spoil the experience of discovering it on your own. The next time you're at the Academy, go look at it. But, go at night when it's quiet and you can spend some time contemplating it. You'll be surprised by what you see."

Their conversation had moved on to other topics, and he'd enjoyed getting to know someone who could fill him in on the many colleagues who had died, retired, or found other employment since he had left Starfleet nearly ten years earlier.

But, upon his return to Earth, he had wasted no time in coming to Enterprise Hall as soon as he could find the time.

After the Starfleet commander left the lounge, Chakotay stood up and moved around the room, finding new images that had been hidden from him while at his previous perspectives, and then he'd stopped in his tracks.

At the bottom right of the mural, entwined with the artist's initials, was an abstract wing shape which was a close approximation of the visible part of his tattoo. He couldn't take his eyes off of it and decided he needed a much closer look. He discovered that a sofa and end table were positioned right under the signature. He took the lamp off and then climbed up on the table so he could reach the bottom of the mural and run his fingers over the ridges and valleys of paint.

The letters "KJ" were intricately wound around a flaring fan of lines that was alarmingly similar to his facial tattoo. Was it by sheer chance that Kathryn had woven this particular symbol into her monogram? If Chakotay were true to the beliefs of his people, a connection as profound as this one could not be written off as a coincidence. He contemplated the significance of such a clear sign, a message from the unseen spirit world that their destinies were unavoidably intertwined.

Suddenly, something brushed against his knee, and then he heard Kathryn's voice behind him. "Chakotay? Did you hear me?"

Surprised by her abrupt arrival, he stepped too close to the edge of the table, which immediately tilted toward the sofa, throwing him off balance. For a few desperate moments, he pin wheeled his arms in a futile attempt to regain his stability while an amazed Kathryn Janeway watched, frozen in wide-eyed fascination. Finally, he pitched away from her, one leg flying up toward the ceiling, and landed with a resounding "Oomph," face up on the leather sofa.

Her face appeared over him. "Are you all right?"

"I think so," he replied, feeling a blush crawling up his neck. "You snuck up on me."

"I spoke to you as I came in, but you didn't answer," she said, her mouth twitching involuntarily. "You could've been hurt, falling like that."

"I was intent on studying the mural," he explained, his own mouth stretching into a grin. "I must've been a sight."

"Oh, yes." She giggled slightly, struggling to keep a straight face by biting her lip and avoiding his eyes, but when she looked at him again, laughter bubbled up from her chest and she collapsed to the floor beside the sofa. She crossed her arms on his shoulder and buried her face as her body shook with amusement.

"Go ahead and laugh at me," he cajoled her with a chuckle. "I know it must have been funny."

"Funny? I wish you could've seen yourself," she said when she finally caught her breath and looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "It was a classic fall! Why do we never have cameras when we need them?"

"Thank God you didn't." He shook his head at her obvious delight at his expense. "I'm glad I could provide today's comic relief."

"Oh, Chakotay, you don't know how much I needed that laugh right now."

"Tough day?"

"The absolute worst." She smiled affectionately at him, her arm still resting on his chest. "You know how it is. After an interminable, stressful day with one stupid mistake after another, things like your fall can seem so ridiculously funny that you just lose it. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings."

"No, I actually wish I could've seen it myself," he said with a smirk as he struggled to sit up. "I didn't break the table, did I?"

"I don't think so." She stood up and examined the table before she put the lamp back on it. "When you said you wanted to meet me here, I had a pretty good idea why."

He was sitting on the sofa, his elbows on his knees. "The mural is breath-taking, Kathryn."

"I have mixed feelings about it." She walked back a few feet, gazing up at the painting with a critical look in her eye. "How did you find out that I painted it?"

"Do you remember Susan Brown?"

"You met Brownie on your trip? How is she?"

"Teaching history on Rigel V." He spent a few minutes filling her in on her classmate and then twisted to look behind him. "She said you were injured while painting the mural."

"Yes, I was. I was working on it every spare minute as the spring semester came to an end. This part of the building was going to open during the summer, and I knew I had to finish before I left on the first year cruise." She sat down in a chair across from him with a sigh. "Between this and my class work I was really overextended. I don't know whether it was exhaustion or carelessness that caused the accident, but the scaffolding failed. I fell just about where you did just now, except I didn't have an overstuffed sofa to break my fall."

"Oh! You've told me that you hurt your back when you were a cadet."

"Yeah. It took six weeks for me to fully recover, which meant that I missed the cruise, of course." She sat back in the chair and studied the mural. "I was so excited when this design won the mural competition. I had no idea what a disaster it would turn out to be."

He shrugged. "You're an admiral. I'd say missing the first-year cruise wasn't such a big deal in the long run."

"Maybe not, but in the short run it caused a very big fuss."

"With your parents?"

"With my father." She leaned her head back on the cushion and closed her eyes. "I don't think I mentioned that the artistic talent comes from Mom's side of the family. So, Phoebe was the artist, like the Kiernan's. I was the one to carry on the Janeway tradition, pure math and science."

"I thought that you'd given up on painting when you were a kid."

"I continued to take art classes in school, and I always fiddled with it as a hobby." She lifted her head and looked at him. "All that frivolity was supposed to come to a halt once I graduated from high school. Dad made it clear that the academy was supposed to be 'all business,' so I didn't tell my parents that I was taking art classes in addition to a full load of science and math. I almost got away with it."

"They didn't find out until you were injured." Both Admiral Paris and Phoebe had told him how much her father's approval had meant to her. He wondered which had hurt worse, the injured back or the fact that she'd disappointed him. "And then you were charged with gross insubordination?"

She laughed. "Nothing that formal. Dad was more embarrassed than anything. You see, he had pulled some strings and called in a few favors so that I could do my first year cruise on the Enterprise. He planned to surprise me with the news once finals were over."

"Wow. I didn't think the first year cruise was allowed on the big ships."

"They aren't. And when he found out I was injured while painting a mural . . . well, let's just say he was very disappointed in me." She gave him a weak smile. "So you're looking at my final artistic fling, in a way. After that, I knew better than to let art intrude on my 'real' studies."

"So, this is finished?" He glanced up at the signature block. "It's exactly the way you wanted it to be?"

"It's finished. I only needed another day or so to have it the way I wanted it, so I took care of that at the end of the summer."

"So, tell me. How many figures are hidden in it?"

"Figures? What figures?" she said, her face unreadable for a moment before she gave him a wink. "That's one reason I wanted nothing but my initials there, Chakotay, so I wouldn't have to answer that question. We're all seeking something in our journeys into space, and that goal varies from one person to another. Some want escape, others definition, or fulfillment, or notoriety. What one person seeks, another person doesn't. I like to think that the mural is like that."

"I think I joined Starfleet because I was seeking peace. I'd never felt at home with my people, and I thought Starfleet was the answer. What were you seeking, Kathryn?"

"I'm not sure I was seeking anything as much as following my instincts, Chakotay. I think I felt like it was my destiny to be out there, that I was born to do it." Before he could ask her if that destiny was hers or her father's, her commbadge chirped. She scowled as she tapped it. "Janeway here."

"Admiral, we've received an update on the Ticonderoga's diplomatic problem, and Admiral Hayes wants your opinion of the captain's explanation before you leave for the evening."

"All right. I'll be there in ten minutes," she replied, sighing wistfully as soon as the contact was broken and rubbing her forehead as if a headache threatened. "There are some days that just never end."

He stood up and offered her a hand. "I understand how that can be."

She allowed him to pull her up from the chair, but then she kept his hand in hers as she looked past him at the mural. "Sometimes, even I'm surprised by what I see up there."

He turned to look, eyes widening with surprise as the outline of a dove appeared, looking as if it were descending gracefully from the heavens toward the lower right corner where the mural was signed. "A dove," he whispered, admiring its clean lines.

"The dove of peace," she nodded, giving him a wicked smile. "Exactly what you said you were looking for in space. See?"

"Amazing," he said, marveling the second striking coincidence. "How were you able to make those images appear like that?"

"Trade secret," she joked, giving him a wink as she gazed at the mural again. "Although painting it got me in big trouble, I am proud of the mural, Chakotay, and I'm glad you like it."

"Do you ever wonder what great work you might have done if you hadn't put painting aside?"

She shook her head and chuckled. "Not really. I don't have the passion for art that Phoebe has and that every true artist needs. I wasn't willing to defy my Janeway heritage and pursue art at all costs the way an artist must. I enjoy painting and sculpting, of course, but I'm truly passionate about science and math and the thrill of exploration. Ultimately, we pursue the fields of study that ignite out passion. Don't you agree?"

"I guess you're right."

She gave his hand a squeeze. "I haven't forgotten that I promised to do a painting for you when I have the time."

"I'm holding you to that promise."

She nodded and let go of his hand. "I need to get back to my office, but before I do . . . ." She paused, suddenly unsure of how to proceed. "Seven and I have talked now and then since she left. I thought you'd like to know that she's doing well on Vulcan and finds their restrained culture better suited to her nature than Earth's was."

"Thanks. I'm glad to know that, and I wish her well. I'm well on the road to recovery, Kathryn. Don't worry about me."

"Good to know." Kathryn checked the time and frowned. "I wish we had time for a nice leisurely dinner. I miss talking to you and hearing your opinion on dilemmas. Next time you come to San Francisco, give me a day's notice and I'll rearrange my schedule."

"I'll do that. I miss you, too."

After a quick hug goodbye, she turned and walked toward the doorway, her commbadge chirping again before she left the room. "Janeway here," he heard her say, and then she was gone.

He took an unhurried walk to the transport station, turning over in his mind the image of his tattoo entwined with Kathryn's monogram and the swooping dove of peace just above it. Still deep in thought when he let himself into his apartment, he collapsed on the sofa to contemplate the afternoon's events.

Kathryn had painted occasionally in her ready room, producing charming, if somewhat primitive landscapes that were still vivid in his memory. She had even replicated some paints and a canvas on New Earth, although she had never had time to use them. It had been during a visit to her da Vinci holodeck program when he'd come to understand the depth and breadth of her talent, but she'd simply brushed her artistic gift aside as a trifling hobby.

His eyes moved to a shelf where he displayed the few treasures he'd allowed himself to collect during his travels. The small figurine of a dog caught his attention, and he stood to retrieve it and study it for the thousandth time. The statue, barely six inches tall, was a perfect likeness of an Irish setter. He had found the original while visiting a holodeck scenario on Voyager and had replicated this copy without asking the sculptor for permission.

He had been caught by the way the artist had created the illusion of movement in the way the dog's hair fell in long graceful waves and the way the left paw was slightly raised, as if the animal were about to leap from the clay into action, perhaps to chase a ball or a toy thrown for its enjoyment. But the truly remarkable feature was the dog's eyes, which were alert, intelligent, and affectionate, even joyful. The very spirit of the animal had been expertly captivated in the clay as if waiting to be miraculously released into life.

He wondered if it were true that we pursue only those fields of study that ignite our passion, as Kathryn had said. He wondered if the artist would be angry with him for replicating this small dog as a reminder of all that life forces us to give up, of all the beauty that duty and responsibility takes from us without remorse. He imagined she would understand.

After all, the sculptor was Kathryn Janeway.


	4. Broken Hearts 4

Broken Hearts

Chapter 4

September 11, 2378--Jupiter Station

Mark Johnson

Chakotay was trying to find a comfortable sleeping position in the chairs of Jupiter Station's waiting room when he noticed a big man with a familiar face studying him from the other side of the room. He shifted in his seat and regretted, again, missing the outgoing flight from Alpha Centauri, and then his connection to Earth. If he hadn't been delayed, he'd be home on earth asleep in his own bed.

He peered through his lashes and saw that the man was still staring at him. Feigning sleep, he burrowed into his folded jacket he was using for a pillow, hoping the stranger wasn't another reporter wanting an interview about Voyager. Surely the man would have enough decency to let an exhausted traveler nap in peace.

"Is this seat taken?"

Chakotay opened one eye to find the stranger towering over him, a look of embarrassed determination on his face as he gestured at the seat directly across from Chakotay. He scowled as he tried to remember where he'd seen the man's face before. Was he a well-known commentator on some news network? Had he written a book that had garnered him Federation-wide attention? Was he a former colleague who had moved on to another line of work?

"I'm not using it," Chakotay grumbled, closing his eye again. He heard the man hesitate and hoped for silence, only to be disappointed once again.

"I hate to interrupt your nap, but I have to ask. You were Kath's first officer, weren't you?"

Kath? Chakotay's eyes flew open. Who would call Captain Janeway Kath? He sat up slightly, giving the man a more careful look. "Have we met?"

"I'm sure we haven't. I'm Mark Johnson."

When Chakotay made the connection, he sat straight up in the seat. "Not the Mark Johnson who sent Kathryn . . . who was engaged to marry Kathryn Janeway?"

"You were right the first time. I was the bum who sent her a Dear John letter while she was stranded 70,000 light years from home." Johnson blushed and nervously turned the wedding band on his finger. "Later I realized that I should've lied to her and let her think I was still waiting for her rather than adding to her misery by telling her the truth. It was cruel to drop her like that from the opposite side of the galaxy."

"Mark Johnson?" Chakotay repeated his name as he stood up and offered the man his hand. He carefully took his measure. He had a firm grip. They were about the same height and build, with dark hair and dimples. But Johnson had blue eyes and the soft palm of an inactive man, as would befit a professor and a member of the prestigious Questor philosophical think tank. "I remember when she got your letter. She was sad, but I don't think she was surprised that you had moved on. It had been years since Voyager disappeared. Moving on was the logical thing to do, and as for telling her? She prefers honesty." He gestured at the seat across from his. "Sit down?"

Johnson took the seat and studied his hands as Chakotay studied him. This was the person whom Kathryn had loved and had planned to marry. This man had kissed her, held her, made love to her, taken her on vacations, lived with her, and been privy to her most personal thoughts and plans. Chakotay fought back a wave of jealousy and focused instead on easing the man's obvious discomfort.

Johnson sighed. "You're right about Kath preferring honesty. But I keep thinking that I could have been gentler about it." He leaned his elbow on his knees, his chin on one hand. "I should've emphasized how much I grieved over losing her, how hard it was to move on. I should have told her that I'd always love her, because I will, Chakotay."

Chakotay shook his head. "I'm sure she knew all that, Mark. It's just that . . . well, we all had to have something or someone to come home to. And she had every intention, from day one, of getting home sooner rather than later, whether you waited for her or not."

"The ironic thing is that I was always much more committed to our relationship than she was. Her work always came first, and she always expected me to adapt my schedule to hers. I'm not sure she would admit it, but she always thought of me as a sort of a safety net--a screen to protect her from the men who seemed to be drawn to her wherever she went."

Chakotay's head snapped up. Had Johnson called himself a safety net? He remembered that Kathryn had called him that when she'd told Chakotay about her "Dear John" letter. "I don't understand."

"I don't know if she told you much about our relationship." He blushed. "Maybe you aren't interested and would rather get some sleep."

"No, please, tell me." He could sense that Johnson needed to talk to someone, and Chakotay's curiosity was compelling him to listen. He never tired of gathering data on his friend, never gave up on understanding her better.

"I first met her when she was five years old, a new kindergartner waiting for the bus down the lane from the house we'd moved into just days earlier. I was seven and going into second grade, so I was much more worldly-wise, much more experienced than she was." He laughed at the memory. "Some of the other kids started teasing her about being a baby. When I told them to shut up and leave her alone, she reached up and took my hand, and then she looked up at me with those big blue eyes, and I was hooked." He laughed and shook his head. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

Chakotay smiled, shivering at the soul-shattering impact those same blue eyes had had on him thirty years later. "Actually, I do believe in love at first sight. Or at least lust at first sight."

"Oh, yes, I know about that, but I was much too young for lust," Johnson chuckled. "I never really got over Kathryn Janeway, and I never will. Oh, I'm happily married, don't get me wrong, and I'm committed to my wife and son, but once you truly love someone, you always love them."

"That's true."

"And she tolerated me."

"Are you implying that Kathryn didn't love you? I think she did."

"Yes, in her way, she did. She never loved me the passionate way I loved her, but I understood that and accepted her limitations as inevitable." He looked miserable. "In many ways, I probably feel about my wife the way Kath felt about me--a deep appreciation for her loyalty and her willingness to forgive me for not loving her back as passionately as I should. Marie appreciates my zealous determination to be faithful to her. She accepts it for what I can give her and lets the rest go."

"Kathryn's limitations?" Chakotay wasn't reluctant to admit that his former captain had shortcomings, even though0000 she was completely human and as flawed as anyone else. But, Chakotay had a sick feeling that he knew what Johnson would say next--that she was damaged by the trauma of the accident that had killed her father and her fiancé.

"Did she ever talk about Justin with you?"

"Justin? Her first fiance? No. In fact, I had no idea she'd been engaged to anyone but you until Phoebe talked about Justin just a few weeks ago."

"A significant omission, don't you think?" When Chakotay didn't answer, Johnson continued. "Would you believe that she talked to me about him only once in all the years we were together?"

Chakotay couldn't hide his surprise. "Did you meet him?"

"No, I didn't. I was already living in South America when she met Justin and brought him home to meet her parents. The accident happened pretty soon after that."

"So you did know about the accident?"

Johnson shrugged. "Only the barest minimum--the type of detail neighbors would share. My family lived down the road from the Janeways for years. We knew that Admiral Janeway and Justin Tighe had been killed in a 'test flight' accident--which we assumed had something to do with the new ships the admiral designed." He rubbed his face with his hands. "And, of course, we knew that Kath had been critically injured at the same time. But none of the details made it to the news reports except the admiral's death. It was very hush-hush. I even heard rumors that they suspected Cardassian sabotage might have been involved."

"And you and Kathryn discussed this?"

"She told me about it once, but that was it. She doesn't talk about it with anyone. I remember when she was promoted to captain, some reporter asked her about her father's tragic death. She just blinked in surprise and said, 'That happened in a different life. No comment.'"

"Strange." Chakotay sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. "She seems so open about her life on the surface."

"She is quite candid about everything but that incident." They sat silently for a few moments, each lost in thought. "I ran into her about a year after the accident, when her dog, Petunia, stole a sandwich out of my picnic basket and led me on a merry chase back to her mistress. Kath and I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up with each other, and then she suddenly started talking about the accident. She felt terribly guilty about surviving when the two men she loved most in the universe died. She cried about it in an emotional outburst that I never saw in her again.

"I had talked to Phoebe about Kath's recovery just a few days earlier, and I knew better than to ask any prying questions. Phoebe believed Kath had been considering suicide after the accident, and she warned me to avoid probing into the details in case it might trigger another bout of depression. I never brought it up again, and she never did, either. I think my respect for her privacy and our lifelong friendship made Kath comfortable enough around me to begin a relationship. Eventually."

Chakotay was shocked. "Suicidal? I can't believe Kathryn Janeway would ever be suicidal. She's too tough."

"Phoebe insists that she was. Apparently Kath was wandering around in a blizzard late one evening when she found Petunia, deserted and nearly frozen. She'd left the house without telling anyone that she was leaving, and Phoebe thinks she planned to just wander off and 'accidentally' freeze to death. Instead, about the time they realized that she'd disappeared, she reappeared with the puppy, anxious to nurse it back to health."

"And she told the reporter the accident happened in a 'different life.' Did she talk to counselors?"

"Sure she did, or she would never have been allowed to return to active duty in Starfleet, and especially not in the command track. We all deal with tragedy in different ways. Some people relive it over and over in their minds and are never able to move ahead. Others accept that it happened and find a way to resume their lives in spite of the pain. Others simply bury it deep within and start over from scratch--as if they are different people."

Chakotay nodded. "And that's what Kathryn did. She changed her career path from science to command and started over."

"But, she'll always carry the scars, Chakotay. She'll never be the innocent, spontaneous, happy, optimistic woman she was before the accident. She's learned a horrible truth, that there is always danger hiding in the shadows, that even the happiest times are temporary and tinged with hopelessness."

Chakotay said, "And so you had this unspoken event that bound you together. You knew about it, so she had no need to go over it again with you. And you never confronted her about her feelings or memories, which meant that it could remain buried. A shared secret like that can be an important element in a committed relationship."

"I'm sure it played a part. I knew her deepest, darkest secret, the one thing that she tries hard to put out of her mind."

"And you were a safety net in that way, too. By staying with you, she could leave the crash buried in the past, trusting you to leave it unmentioned."

"And she knew I loved her even though I knew about the accident, and even though she didn't love me back with the same intensity. I mean, how could I compete with the man who had rescued her from a Cardassian prison?"

"A Cardassian . . . ." Chakotay didn't try to hide his surprise. "Kathryn was in a Cardassian prison?"

"Not long. Justin and his squad of rangers rescued her and Admiral Paris after just two or three days. She'd been beaten, but not physically assaulted." He ducked his head. "Not raped."

Chakotay slumped in his chair, his mind going back to dozens of talks on Voyager in which they'd discussed friends and comrades who had endured the horrors of alien prisons. He had even told her of rescuing fellow Maquis from Cardassian prisons, and yet she had never once told him of her own incarceration. "Kathryn. In a prison."

"Justin was a hero to her. He risked everything to get her out of there, and she loved him passionately. I could never hope for that kind of love from her."

Chakotay stared at the man, working up the courage to ask the question that was in the forefront of his mind. "And you were willing to settle for that?"

"You think I sold myself short?"

"I think you deserve to be loved passionately, Mark. I think everyone deserves that."

"From the first time I met her, I put Kath on a pedestal. She was my ideal woman, the Beatrice to my Dante. She was always oblivious to my feelings, and I never expected her to reciprocate my affection. When she and I started dating, it was enough for me to be near her." He rubbed his hands together. "Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?"

Chakotay shook his head, unwilling to stand in judgment of the man when he, too, had been content simply to serve beside Kathryn for seven years. "It sounds noble to me. Loving someone means giving them what they need no matter what it costs you, even if they can't reciprocate. She needed your support and acceptance, and you didn't hesitate to give it to her. There's nothing to be ashamed of in loving someone that much."

"No, there isn't, and Kathryn never took advantage of my love for her, either." Mark stared at him for a long while, as if seeing him for the first time, and then he leaned forward so he could lower his voice. "Are the rumors true? About you and Kath?"

"The rumors? Are you asking me whether Kathryn and I become involved?" Chakotay laughed. "I think you know her better than that."

Mark sat back in his chair, bemused. "You must have been the ideal first officer for her--a perfect blend of philosopher and soldier. And as much as she relishes the physical part of a relationship . . . ." He sighed, blushing slightly. "She's a very tactile person."

Chakotay looked away in embarrassment. "We were too busy trying to stay alive."

"Still, she must've been terribly lonely. She was lucky to have someone with your wisdom and insight to talk to."

"I guess so."

"Do you . . . ever see her?" Johnson asked.

"Sure. I see her on a regular basis, depending on our schedules."

His eyes bored into Chakotay's. "I would love to talk to her."

Chakotay shifted uncomfortably, unwilling to be a messenger. "I'm sure she'd welcome a call."

"It's just that Marie is so threatened by Kath, and with our second child due any minute . . . ." Johnson looked up as a flight was announced. "Well, that's my transport. It was nice to meet you, Chakotay, and I apologize again for interrupting your nap."

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Mark."

Chakotay watched the man disappear into the crowd, and then he gazed out the viewport at a starship that was slowly approaching the docking level, his mind going back over what Johnson had told him. He tried to put the whole episode behind him in favor of some much needed sleep and struggled once again to find a comfortable position on the chairs. But sleep wouldn't come.

Kathryn had found every possible reason to avoid making a more intimate relationship with him and most of the crew on Voyager. At first, even on New Earth, she had used her engagement to Mark as a barrier to exploring the attraction they shared. She had used Mark as a shield, just as Mark himself had admitted. And then later, once her engagement ended, she focused on being the ship's captain and maintaining a proper distance from the crew in order to be "larger than life," to use her own words.

But what if that habit was something else entirely? What if her isolation was simple avoidance of painful memories? The accident had apparently occurred fairly soon after Justin heroically rescued her from prison--two devastating events in close proximity. Mark Johnson said that she told him only one time of the accident and had never mentioned it again, a very unusual kind of behavior for individuals in an intimate relationship. If she started another serious involvement, she would eventually have to retell the story. Would she choose to be alone rather than reliving that event? And what counselor would let her get away with such an obvious escape?

He stared out the viewport for a long time and finally drifted off to sleep when a familiar voice said, "What are the chances of running into you here?"

Chakotay opened one eye again to find Kathryn Janeway sitting across from him drinking a huge cup of coffee. "Hello to you, too," he yawned, blinking his eyes at the size of the cup she held in both hands. "Did you purchase the entire carafe of coffee?"

She laughed as she held up the tankard in salute. "I asked for the biggest cup they had, and they gave me this--barely enough."

He gave her a dimpled grin. "What are you doing at Jupiter Station? Are you on your way out or heading back?"

"On my way out. I try to stop in and see the doctor whenever I pass through, which slows me down some." She took a long sip. "He didn't mention seeing you."

"No, he didn't mention it, because he didn't see me. My layover was supposed to be only thirty minutes long, so I didn't even tell him I'd be here." He heaved a sigh. "I missed my connection and have been here for hours, hoping for an empty seat to come available. Traveling as a civilian is not fun."

"You could always return to Starfleet." Her tone of voice wasn't very sympathetic.

"I doubt that. When I resigned, the entire admiralty heaved a sigh of relief."

She chuckled. "Well, if you change your mind, let me know. I'm sure I could convince them that you're worth the time and trouble."

"Thanks, but no thanks." He watched her relax in the chair and drink her coffee, and then he realized that she was out of uniform and uncharacteristically alone. He glanced around the area, surprised to find that they were alone. "Where are your strap hangers?"

"You mean my staff? I'm actually on leave." She winced at his expression of complete shock. "I'm on my way to see my sister in the Alpha Centauri system. Which way are you going? Out or back?"

"Back to Earth. I did some consulting work this week with the Daestrom Institute--guerilla tactics--and day after tomorrow I'm interviewing for a lecturing job for the Federation Historical Society."

"That's right," she nodded. "I remember you telling me that you were doing some consulting."

"Kathryn, I think you know a lot more about this Federation interview than you're letting on."

"Oh?" she replied, feigning shock. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that this offer from the Historical Society has your fingerprints all over it." When Kathryn continued to look at him with willful bewilderment, he said, "The artifacts from Voyager have been cataloged and organized for display in museums in various cities on earth. I've been asked to develop lectures about them--providing background information and details of interest about where they came from and why they were valuable enough to their cultures to be given as gifts. If my talks are well accepted, I'll record them so that they can be shown with the artifacts as they are taken to museums throughout the Federation." He waited for a reaction, but when there was none, continued, "But I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you this. I have a feeling you know all about it already."

Her mouth twitched into a typical half grin. "Well, Chakotay, you were there when we acquired those artifacts, and your minor was history at the Academy. It's only logical that they ask you do to this."

"Only logical?"

"Well, it was once I explained the situation properly." She laughed, and he shook his head with a chuckle. "Really, though, it makes sense."

"I owe you for the job, just as I suspected. I'm actually looking forward to doing it, and it gives me enough to live on to be choosy about what job I take for the long term."

"It works out well for everyone involved, then. So you're returning from Alpha Centauri, and I'm on my way out there. Just my luck. I could use a good traveling companion." She looked around at the bustling crowd. "Have you noticed how you always run into someone you know at Jupiter Station? Why is that?"

"They say you can't enter or leave the Sol system without a stop here." He glanced around, too, before he broached the subject that had been on his mind since the moment she'd awakened him. "Speaking of that, you'll never guess who I was talking to not thirty minutes ago." She looked at him expectantly. "Mark Johnson."

The blood drained from her face. "Mark? Was here?"

"He sat in the very seat you're sitting in right now."

She swallowed, struggling to hide her discomfort. "What did he have to say?"

"He asked about you, of course. Seems like a really nice guy."

"Oh, he's a wonderful person," she agreed, regaining her composure. "I haven't talked to him personally since Voyager left for the Badlands nearly eight years ago. I've opened a comm line a dozen times, but . . . I just don't know what to say."

Chakotay paused, but then decided to forge ahead, thinking that maybe he could help her come to terms with what had happened. "Are you still in love with him?"

"It isn't that, exactly," she insisted, although he could see a blush crawling up her neck. "I have a special place in my heart for him, of course, and I guess I always will. It's awkward because our relationship never really ended. It just stopped. I guess I'm afraid of what might happen if I call him."

"Are you afraid that you'll disrupt his marriage? Or are you afraid that he won't care about you one way or the other?"

"Both, probably." She studied the coffee in her cup and then seemed to make a decision. "You know, Mark and I were together for nearly twelve years, yet we never quite managed to tie the knot."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

"That was my fault. I focused most of my time and energy on my career, and he seemed willing to let me do that without so much as a murmur of complaint."

"He loved you."

"Yes, I know he did, but . . . ," she ran her finger around the rim of the mug for a moment. "He let me take advantage of him, Chakotay, and I thought he should've demanded more from me than he did."

"Maybe he was afraid you would leave him if he forced the issue."

"Maybe so." She sighed. "When the last words you spoke to a person were words of love, how do you reopen the conversation eight years later as a mere friend?"

"You could say, 'I just want to let you know that I understand why you moved on and that I hope you're happy.'"

She set her cup on the table and made a big production of looking through her bag. "Let me write that down," she laughed. "It can't be that simple."

"Do you still miss him?"

She put her bag aside with a sigh. "No, I don't miss him any more. I never think of him, to tell the truth."

"That's your answer, then. You need a sense of closure, Kathryn, so that you feel the relationship is really over, and he's the only one who can give you that. You should contact him."

"You're right, of course, and I will call him when I get back from Phoebe's." She reached for her coffee and relaxed in the seat again, giving him an affectionate smile. "Isn't it strange? I have no problem risking life and limb confronting a Kazon maj or conning a Devore inspector or challenging the entire Borg collective, but the prospect of talking to a former fiancé scares me to death."

He watched her intently, wondering if she were aware of the truth that was so evident to him. "You prefer not to deal openly with your emotions, Kathryn, and especially not the painful ones."

"What?" She straightened in her seat slightly.

"I don't mean to hurt your feelings, because it was your ability to seal off that part your life that made you the perfect captain for a ship in Voyager's predicament. You just refused to contemplate your emotions, rejected them as if they were optional. You put aside all that upset you and focused on the present instead."

"That doesn't sound very healthy," she said, her eyes as big as saucers.

"In the long run, Kathryn, it isn't healthy." He got up and moved to the seat beside her, and then he put her coffee mug on the table and took her hands in his. "Mark knows how hard it will be for you to call him, how you would rather just avoid the pain and move on without this closure. He'll help you get through the emotional side of it. You'll see. He's known you for forty years, and he understands you better than you know."

Her eyes flooded with tears as she studied his face. "Maybe it's time for me to break those bad habits?"

"Well, not all at once," he grinned, thinking of the other emotional land mines in her past and worrying that they might overwhelm her. "But I do think that eventually you need to come to terms with all that's happened to you over the years--good and bad--if you ever want to find emotional happiness."

She nodded. "And who, Chakotay, will help me through that?" Their eyes locked, and Chakotay had the briefest glimpse of the pain that she kept so well hidden. He was so shocked by her uncharacteristic vulnerability and openness that he simply stared at her, dumfounded, but before he could answer, she smiled. "I have so much to work through from my years on Voyager that I sometimes feel overwhelmed. But I'm still seeing a counselor, Chakotay, and I'm thinking that it's time to deal with . . . everything I've been through in a better way."

"That's wonderful news, Kathryn," he replied. "And, if you need someone to talk to, any time, you know how to reach me."

Before Kathryn could reply, a transport attendant stepped up to them and cleared her throat. Kathryn pulled her hands away as they turned to the new arrival.

"Mr. Chakotay?" the woman started. "You said you wanted the first available flight to Earth. Well, a seat has come available on the 0900 transport that's boarding at gate 35A right now, and I told them to hold it for you."

He hesitated, torn by his desire to stay and talk to Kathryn and his need to return to work. If he missed this ship, he'd have to rearrange the next three day's appointments, including the interview with the Historical Society. He looked back at her, miserable.

"You'd better go, Chakotay," Kathryn said, placing her hand on his arm to reassure him that it would be all right. "Who knows how long it will be for the next available seat, and my transport leaves in less than thirty minutes, anyway."

"Give me a minute," Chakotay said, nodding at the attendant as he stood up and slung his bag on his shoulder. When he turned, he found Kathryn standing beside him. "I'm glad we had a chance to talk."

"Oh, Chakotay, so am I," she laid her hand on his chest. "I'm finally beginning to understand that I'm no longer everyone's captain and that some of those unnatural command barriers that inhibited me can be permanently dismantled."

He covered her small hand with his, pulling her even closer to his side. He spoke softly, so that only she could hear him, "That's the best news I've had all year."

She reached up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You'd better be on your way."

"Call me when you get back," he said as he followed the attendant down the passageway.

"I will," she answered, picking up her own belongings.

"Was that Admiral Janeway?" the attendant asked as soon as they were out of earshot, her voice full of awe at having been in the presence of such a celebrity. "She's so petite."

"Don't let her small size fool you," he chuckled. He had a huge grin on his face, and he wasn't about to explain why. He thought there had been an imperceptible shift in his friendship with his former captain, toward an intimacy that they'd repressed for years, and he felt as if his heart was going to explode with joy. Of course, he might be mistaken, and he told himself that he had to make sure before he let himself be hurt once again. When they reached the turning point of the passageway, he would glance back toward her. If she were still there, watching him leave, his suspicion of a change would be confirmed.

As he turned the corner, he paused, ostensibly to adjust his bag, and glanced back to where Kathryn stood, still watching him. She smiled as she raised her left hand in the traditional Starfleet cadet salute of friendship, and he returned it as relief surged through his body.

He chuckled when the attendant seemed confused at his next statement. "You know, things are finally looking up."

"Because you're finally going home?" she wondered. "Relieved to catch a transport at last?"

"Yeah," he agreed, giving her a wink. "Home, at last. That's it."


	5. Broken Hearts 5

Broken Hearts

Chapter 5

Late September 2378—North American continent

Gretchen Janeway

Just a day after returning from his chance meeting with Admiral Janeway on Jupiter Station, Chakotay was selected to do a series of seven lectures on the Voyager artifacts, roughly one lecture per year of their journey. He threw himself into the first year's collection with glee, starting with the blanket and small tea set that the Ocampa had given the captain for helping them begin their transformation toward a self-sustaining society, each item taking him back to those first dramatic days of their journey.

His hope had been that this engrossing job would take his mind off of Kathryn's fascinating history once and for all, but he soon learned that handling items that had been acquired while they served together on Voyager only served to keep her constantly on his mind. He remembered vividly when each gift had been offered, how Kathryn had graciously accepted it, and how he had packed it away for posterity, carefully recording the date, time, and significance of the artifact to the culture that had given it. The job had been his favorite duty on the ship, and he'd kept such detailed and careful notes that it was simple to construct an interesting lecture—so simple, in fact, that his mind kept wandering back to Kathryn.

When she had been a lowly ensign and a science officer, she had been captured by the Cardassians and thrown into prison just a few months into her first deep space assignment. She had been rescued just days later by a member of the crew, and, perhaps as a result of her gratitude, she fell madly and deeply in love with him, agreeing to marry him less than a year after her graduation from the academy.

He shook his head in disbelief. It was incredible to think that his captain, whose emotions were consistently reserved and aloof in her dealings with Voyager's crew, had been so eager to commit herself to a permanent relationship at the very beginning of her career, but apparently it had happened. She had been ready to do whatever it took to be a wife as well as a Starfleet officer.

And then, when the ship returned to Earth and she took her fiancé home to meet the family, her father had taken the couple with him on a test flight of a prototype ship, a flight that had ended in disaster—critical, nearly fatal injuries for Kathryn and death for the two men she adored. It was a miracle that she had survived, a bigger miracle that she survived with her sanity intact.

Even so, everyone said that she emerged from this ordeal a different person, and who wouldn't? Living through trauma as profound as what she'd been through would have a permanent effect on anyone's personality. After nearly a year of physical and psychological therapy, she returned to active duty, changed specialties from science to command, and began what could only be described as an lukewarm relationship with a life-long friend who described himself as a shield from other men—a safety net she used to protect herself from deeper emotional ties.

The whole story was simply fascinating to Chakotay, who was having a difficult time reconciling it to the woman he'd come to know in the Delta Quadrant. He made no secret of the fact that he had studied her closely on Voyager, not only so that he could be a better first officer, but because he found her such a compelling personality, an uncanny combination of delicate lace and unyielding duranium, a beautiful woman who was a consummate Starfleet captain.

Her comments at Jupiter Station about confronting her past made him think that the time was ripe, that she might finally be ready to work through that trauma and put it behind her once and for all. He was anxious to confront Kathryn about her past, but also afraid that she would completely withdraw from him if he did so without a good idea of how to handle her reaction. There was really only one other person who could help fill in the tantalizing facts that were still missing in the story—her mother. If he wanted to help Kathryn, he would need to know all he could before he began the process.

Chakotay contacted Gretchen Janeway the Friday after his return to earth, and was surprised that she seemed to be expecting his call; no doubt she'd been tipped off by her younger daughter, Phoebe, about his quiet investigation of Kathryn's past.

"I've been wondering when you'd get around to talking to me," Gretchen said, giving him a mysterious smile. "Why don't you come for lunch on Sunday? I have a new recipe for spinach lasagna that I want to try, and you would be the perfect person to critique it."

Chakotay had met Gretchen at both formal and informal Starfleet dinners and receptions, and he and Seven of Nine had been guests at Gretchen's home the previous summer, so he was fairly comfortable in talking to her about her daughter. He'd never met Kathryn's father, of course, but he was willing to bet that her mother was the source of her excellent interpersonal skills and incredibly accurate intuition. He'd seen Gretchen studying him and Kathryn and had wondered what she'd sensed about their friendship that brought the knowing twinkle to her eye. He had no doubt that she'd be gathering as much information from him as he was getting from her during their Sunday meeting.

Frankly, Gretchen Janeway fascinated him. For one thing, she was nearly a carbon copy of the Admiral Janeway who had traveled back in time to bring Voyager home, the only differences being Gretchen's lighter blue eyes and several inches of height. Her voice sounded so much like Kathryn's that he felt certain she could fool anyone on Voyager into thinking she was their captain if she spoke over a ship-wide intercom. And, most importantly, she seemed to look into his heart, the way Kathryn did. He doubted very much that he could successfully lie to her, and so he approached their talk with a little trepidation. Gretchen might ask him questions about his feelings for her daughter that he was unwilling to discuss.

The meal went well. The lasagna was delicious, as was the homemade bread, green salad, and strawberry cheesecake. Chakotay enjoyed their friendly banter during dinner, regaling her with a dozen hilarious stories from his seven years service on Voyager and hearing equally interesting accounts of Kathryn's childhood. He had such a wonderful time that he decided, mid-cheesecake, to forego the real reason for his visit and simply enjoy her company. After helping her clean up the kitchen, they settled on the same back porch where he and Phoebe had talked that summer and shared a steaming pot of coffee.

He soon discovered, however, that Gretchen wasn't about to let him get away without telling her the reason for his visit.

"I'm flattered, of course, to have such a handsome young man visit me," she said, giving him an irreverent smile, "but I'm sure you're here to ask me about Katie. Right?"

He blushed and gave her a dimpled grin. "The longer I'm home, the more I hear about her from others, the more I realize how much of herself she hid from me . . . from us . . . while we served under her. I knew Voyager's Captain Janeway like the back of my hand, but Kathryn, and Katie, as you call her, has become a mystery that tantalizes me."

"And you think I can solve the mystery?" She laughed, shaking her head. "Since she was a little girl, Katie had a mind of her own. She was driven to do her best always, and she seemed determined to please everyone she cared about, especially Edward, her father. There were times that I feared she connected success with love and acceptance so much that she would never be able to forgive herself if she failed at an important task."

Chakotay glanced away, realizing that she must have felt she'd failed in preventing her father's and Justin's deaths. "What if she did fail at something important, Gretchen? How would she deal with it?"

"How did she deal with it on Voyager?"

"Usually she was furious with herself, accepting no explanations and offering no excuses. And she threw herself into the next challenge that came along with even more dedication." He paused a moment, remembering how many times she'd started a conversation by saying they couldn't change what had happened, but they could change what happened next. "She never wanted to talk about our failures, not after we'd decided what had gone wrong. She never dwelled on it out loud, but I suspect she carried it around inside."

"I suspect you're right."

"But, Gretchen, that's not a healthy way to be."

"She was the captain, Chakotay. She had no right to burden her crew with her problems. She was groomed from the cradle for the job, and she willingly did whatever was demanded to be successful at it."

"But I was her friend for nearly seven years! Are you saying she kept up that façade for all that time?"

"If you needed her to be a friend, she would be your friend, Chakotay, but, only as much of a friend as her position would allow her to be. Her needs, her wants would never be part of the equation."

He shook his head in disbelief. "So our friendship was an act? She was being insincere?"

"I know she thinks the world of you, if that's what you mean. Are you saying she never relaxed around you?"

"Oh, no, she was very relaxed in private. We told each other stories, we laughed, we shared meals. But I didn't realize how much she was holding back from me--the most important details of her life. I thought we'd discussed everything significant that had happened to us. I know I did. But then, I get back and find out that she didn't tell me the most devastating heartbreak in her life!"

Gretchen nodded, and her voice cracked. "The crash of the Terra Nova." For a moment, Chakotay thought she might cry. "She believes she should have found a way to save them. She survived and they didn't, the men she loved more than life itself. She's spent the rest of her life trying to make up the difference, Chakotay."

"But that's not fair."

She gave him a weak smile. "You think we haven't tried to tell her that? Her family? Her counselors? Her Starfleet mentors? Neither Edward nor Justin would want her to be unhappy, or haunted, or ashamed, and she knows that on an intellectual level. She's been very successful in her career, Chakotay, but not so much in her private life. She won't allow herself real personal joy, and time hasn't lessened that resolve. And her promotion to captain didn't help. The need for the captain to be aloof and separate has only served to accentuate some of her bad habits."

"But, I would think that time would resolve some of those habits."

"I guess there are some injuries that never heal."

"The Bajorans have a saying about that: 'A broken heart never stops bleeding.'"

"I think, in Katie's case, that's true."

"Did I ever know her?" Chakotay asked, walking to the window. He struggled to keep his temper in check. "Was everything she told me a half truth or a blatant lie?"

"Of course not." Gretchen Janeway followed him, putting a comforting hand on his arm. "Kathryn Janeway wouldn't lie to you about anything important, and you know that."

"There's such a thing as a lie of omission," he insisted, giving her a miserable look. "We spent hours and hours together. We shared everything for years. I thought we were friends, even best friends. I thought we could tell each other anything. I thought we had told each other everything."

"You know who Kathryn really is, you just didn't know why she's the way she is." Gretchen let that thought sink in before she continued. "We're all the product of our experiences."

"Yes, we are." He relaxed slightly and took a deep breath. "It's just that so many of my assumptions about her were wrong because I didn't know the experiences that shaped her. And I believe she wanted me to be misled."

"She probably didn't want to burden you. She has trouble facing her past and tries hard to forget about it. We all have memories that are too painful to acknowledge, Chakotay. As you said, some experiences break your heart so completely that it never truly heals. You just find a way to continue living in spite of it."

"You find the courage to live with a broken heart."

"What else can you do?" Gretchen led him back to the sofa where they sat down again.

"We all do what we have to do," he answered her, realizing that he was speaking words he'd heard Kathryn use time and again in the Delta Quadrant.

"The Kathryn who emerged from the crash wasn't the same person she'd been before, Chakotay. She couldn't be." She leaned over to refill her mug with coffee, but her hands were shaking too much to hold the pot. Chakotay took it from her and filled the mug for her.

"I'm sorry to upset you," he said as he handed her the mug. "I didn't mean to."

"It's not your fault. All of us were damaged, Chakotay. Phoebe was devastated, her family shattered. I lost my husband of nearly thirty years and my future son-in-law. In many ways, I lost my daughter, too. Katie struggled so hard to survive her injuries, only to wish she'd died when she learned what the accident had cost her. It was simply too much for her. Too hard."

The woman wilted into Chakotay's arms and cried bitter tears into his shoulder. He comforted her and reassured her and then said, "Kathryn's heart was broken?" Gretchen nodded, keeping her face buried. He continued, his voice thoughtful, "But she was a tower of strength to us. She faced down incredible odds without blinking. She took calculated risks that would scare accomplished test pilots to death. She never looked away from danger or refused a challenge. You're telling me that this lioness I served under is in reality a woman who's afraid of her own past?"

"I know she's tough when she has to be, especially on a bridge. But she can't talk about that one day, Chakotay. She can't and she won't." Gretchen pulled away and dried her eyes on a napkin.

"She talked to the counselors about it? To you? I know she talked to Mark Johnson about it."

"Oh, yes, she had to, of course. Early on, she talked about it once in awhile. But each telling was also a reliving of the disaster. I doubt that she's mentioned it to anyone in ten years. And when someone has the audacity to ask her about it, she always says that it happened in someone else's life, not hers." She looked away. "But she thinks about it, Chakotay. I can see it in her face some mornings when she hasn't slept well. I can sense it when she comms me from deep space just to talk about nothing in particular. There are times when I wish I could erase it from her memory."

Stunned, Chakotay just looked at her. "Funny you should say that, because Kathryn has said almost the same thing herself." He just shook his head, remembering how different Kathryn had been when her memories of earth had been erased on Quarra. On that planet, she told him that she had been able to fall in love with Jaffen because she'd been relieved of a burden of guilt from her past. "Usually, the memorial service helps bring such issues to a head."

"Well," Gretchen started, wiping her tears away with a tissue, "about the memorial service."

"Don't tell me." He looked at her in disbelief. "You never had one."

"Right after the accident, all we could think about was Katie and whether or not she would survive. They brought her back to a hospital in Chicago, and Phoebe and I spent every possible minute we could with her. Once she regained consciousness, she was fragile and weak. She was involved in months of physical and psychological therapy that took up all my free time." She stared into the fire as she spoke, her eyes unfocused. "Emotionally, a memorial service could have been devastating for her, and so we decided to let it go."

"What about their remains? Did you bury them without a ceremony?"

"The bodies were never recovered from the planet." Gretchen glanced at him and shrugged. "I know it sounds strange, but Edward often talked about a crash site being a fitting resting place for the dead. It isn't unprecedented."

"No, it isn't, but it is unusual not to have some sort of memorial. Without one, it's hard for the survivors to reach closure."

"Yes, it is." She dabbed at the tears that fell from her eyes again. "I've thought it would be nice to have a place to go that is dedicated to Edward's memory." She gave him a shy smile. "I sometimes find myself talking to him."

"I'd be surprised if you didn't," Chakotay sympathized, taking her hand. "Maybe it's time for the ceremony?"

"I think it's too late. Katie would never agree to it."

"It really isn't her decision to make. And, anyway, you might be surprised, Gretchen. Maybe she's ready to move on."

"I wouldn't even know how to broach the subject."

"We're talking about your husband, Gretchen. You don't need Kathryn's permission to recover his body and have a memorial ceremony. She might choose not to come--that's her right. But . . . . " He stopped as the woman burst into tears. He pulled her into an embrace and let her cry on his shoulder again. "It's not being selfish to do what you need to do to feel comfortable about your husband's grave site. If you want me to, I'll help arrange things. I'll even talk to Kathryn."

"You must think I'm a fool to indulge Katie as I have, but I was so afraid for her, and then it had been almost a year since he'd died, and she was just beginning to resume her life and career."

"I understand. You didn't want to add to her difficulties."

"I know she seems indestructible on the bridge--at least that's what people tell me. But, in her personal life, she is emotionally controlled and aloof. She never really recovered from her loss."

"What about Mark Johnson? They were engaged to be married, right?"

"Yes, they were. Mark accepted her limitations. He's loved Katie for years. I think he's always loved her, and he forgave her for her inability to love him back. In some ways, it's a blessing that he moved on and found someone who can commit everything to him."

Chakotay felt melancholy welling up from deep within. "A heartbreaking story, but one of great courage."

"Katie's story? Yes." Gretchen struggled with her emotions a moment before taking a deep, calming breath. "No one knows what happened in those last minutes on the Terra Nova, not even Katie can remember the specifics. But she believes that she could have, even should have, done something to save their lives."

"She can't know that. She doesn't remember what happened just before the crash, right? Why would she remember something right after it? She can't really know that she could've saved them."

"Apparently, there is evidence that Edward and Justin did something to increase her chances for survival. They both loved her enough to die for her, God knows."

Chakotay remembered Phoebe's words about how wrong Justin had been for her sister and wondered if Gretchen shared that opinion. He hesitated, trying to think of a way to broach the subject. Finally, he decided on the simplest question possible: "What was Justin like?"

"Nice looking, and well respected in his work, according to Edward. He was a lieutenant, several years older than Katie, and I could tell he loved her." She looked away. "I only met him a few times, Chakotay, and hesitate to jump to conclusions about someone when I didn't know him as well as I should."

"You had reservations about him and Kathryn?"

"I thought she was in too much of a hurry to get married." She shook her head. "Katie was obsessed with Justin, so much so that she would have put her Starfleet career on the back burner so she could be his wife. He could do no wrong in her eyes--just like her father. She thought he was the perfect man."

"And he wasn't perfect."

She smiled at him. "No one is perfect, Chakotay. Edward had his flaws, just as Justin did, even though Katie preferred to overlook them. The problem was that Katie deluded herself." She shook her head. "Or at least, I thought she did. I saw Edward's defects before I married him, and I knew I could live with them. Kathryn, on the other hand, thought Justin was perfect . . . or perhaps she simply believed his flaws were irrelevant, or that she could change him." She shrugged. "I don't believe that a marriage based on that kind of fantasy would have stood the test of time."

"So you agree with Phoebe? You thought the marriage was doomed?"

"Not at all. Phoebe tends to be overly dramatic--surely you've noticed?" She chuckled. "Never underestimate Katie's self-discipline and determination--she would never have given up on Justin. She would have made the marriage work, would have done whatever was necessary to make it last. But, I don't think she would have been happy with Justin. Not in the long run."

"She doesn't realize that, of course."

"No, she doesn't. Their relationship was still new when it ended so tragically, and I'm sure she preserves that 'glow' of first true love when she thinks of him. And I'm also sure that she thinks he and her father died saving her life."

"How can she know that?"

Gretchen shrugged. "I think the flight recorder was recovered. There was something about the angle and speed of re-entry being manipulated so that the rear section of the Terra Nova, where Katie was working, sheered off, floating down gently with the parachute."

"The parachute." Chakotay nodded, thinking out loud. "If their descent was too fast and too steep, the chute wouldn't slow down the entire vessel sufficiently. But if the rear section, the part that housed the chute, came down alone . . . ."

"That was it," Gretchen agreed, putting her hand on his arm. "Katie felt that they had intentionally maneuvered the ship to insure her survival."

He covered her hand with his own, desperately wanting to comfort this woman who had suffered so much pain and loss. "So she truly feels she owes them her life."

"Yes," she replied, leaning against the solid comfort of his body, grateful to have a sympathetic ear. "Kathryn claims that she owes them a debt that she can never repay."

Later, after he returned to San Francisco, Chakotay took a long walk through his neighborhood, lost in thought. It was a perfect September day, warm and sunny with a spectacular sunset. Although he was surrounded by tourists, he focused on what he had to do. Kathryn was expected to return from her sister's in just a few days, and he was determined to confront her about her past in a way that would allow her to find some sort of closure. There had to be a way.

Being alone with Gretchen had made him rethink his reaction to the Admiral Janeway who had sacrificed her life to bring Voyager home. He'd believed that she had been damaged by their extended period of exile in the Delta Quadrant, and that belief hadn't changed. But now that he knew the whole story of Kathryn's past, he also knew that the impact her survival guilt had added to the strain. Kathryn might end up as troubled and sorrowful as the admiral if this issue remained unresolved throughout her life.

His apartment was cool and dark when he returned just after sunset, and the missed call light blinked a dull red on his comm unit as he closed the door behind him. He peeled off his jacket and slumped into the chair, quickly entering his code to check his messages.

The first call was from Kathryn.

"I'm arriving Tuesday night on the 1800 shuttle. How about dinner? Let me know before I leave," she glanced at something beside her on the desk, probably a flight schedule, "tomorrow at 0800 your time. I've missed you." She gave him a smile as she broke the connection.

He mavelled at the way fate was working in his favor. He acknowledged his receipt of the dinner invitation and agreed to meet her--they would finalize when and where once she arrived. He had just two days to formulate his plans.

It was time for Kathryn Janeway to move on, and he was just the man to make it happen.


	6. Broken Hearts 6

Broken Hearts

Chapter 6

October 1, 2378

San Francisco

When Kathryn Janeway beamed into the transport station near Chakotay's apartment complex, she immediately crossed her arms and looked miserable. Chakotay offered her the warm jacket that was hanging from the crook of his finger without a word of admonishment. Although the weather sites listed the temperature in the mid-forties and warned of a stiff, cold breeze, Kathryn was notorious for failing to check the local conditions before she beamed down to a planet.

"Thank you! And not a word, mister!" she cautioned him as she took the jacket and slipped it on, burrowing her hands into the pockets. "I thought this was October, not the middle of winter!"

"The cold front arrived yesterday afternoon with a vengeance. It was beautiful Sunday."

"Just my luck," she laughed, pulling her hands out of her pockets just long enough to give him a brief hug. "It was summer when I left for Phoebe's, so I didn't think to pack anything warm."

He escorted her out of the small building and into the misty fog, noticing the way she hunched into the jacket against the damp chill. He said, "I thought we'd start at the coffee shop."

"You're an angel." She gave him a brilliant smile.

"I know you, Kathryn, that's all. And why wouldn't I after living and working with you for nearly seven years?"

They talked incessantly while she drank three huge mugs of coffee, and then they walked the few blocks that separated the coffee shop and his office. He showed her his small cubicle, the indoor gardens, and one of his favorite museums before they stopped for dinner at a well-known exotic restaurant that served, much to their surprise, several Delta Quadrant specialties popularized by Voyager's fame, including a leota root dish that was much too close to the original as far as they were concerned. When the proprietor realized who they were, he refused to let them pay for their food, and so they autographed a dozen menus for a charity auction, posed for a few snapshots, and then headed for Chakotay's apartment.

"Do you ever get tired of the notoriety?" he asked her as they collapsed on the sofa facing his fireplace.

"It is just the price of fame, I guess," she laughed as she pulled off her boots and looked around the room appreciatively. "I love this apartment, by the way, the warm earth tones and rustic furniture. It's exactly what I would expect you to choose."

"I guess that's a good thing." He put a pillow on the coffee table and gestured for her to put her feet up on it. "I know you want to relax."

"Ahhhh. Thanks." She laid her head back on the cushion and closed her eyes. "It's such a relief to get back to San Francisco. I'm not much of a fan of Alpha Centauri, even if people claim that it's 'just like Earth.'"

"We'll probably never enjoy being away from home after our extended exile." They sat quietly for a few minutes until the comm system beeped from the study. Chakotay moved to answer it. "Excuse me, will you? I'm expecting a call from work."

"Go ahead," she answered, stifling a yawn. "I might doze off while you're gone."

By the time he returned, Kathryn had stretched out on the sofa and fallen fast asleep. He covered her with a cotton blanket, started some restful music, put a fire in the fireplace, and sat down to study her as she slept. She seemed happy, and she had been unusually at ease with him. It had been months since they'd spent more than just a few minutes together one-on-one, and he wondered whether he should delay the confrontation he'd planned until another time, after their friendship was truly mended.

He noticed that her face was a little fuller, thanks to some much-needed additional weight, and that the dark circles he'd seen under her eyes so often had disappeared. He was sure her work habits hadn't changed, and guessed that she was benefiting from the absence of stress and overwhelming responsibility. He put his own feet on the table and relaxed, slipping into a twilight zone between waking and sleeping.

Kathryn's quiet crying awakened him. At first, he wasn't sure what it was that had awakened him, but then she cried again, and he went to her immediately, kneeling on the floor beside her before he gently shook her shoulder. "Kathryn? Are you all right?"

She opened her eyes in surprise, taking a moment to remember where she was. "I'm fine," she reassured him, sitting up and brushing her tears away with the back of her hands. "It was just a bad dream."

"More like a nightmare. What was it about? Something from Voyager?"

"It doesn't matter. I have bad dreams now and then, although I don't usually wake up crying."

No, he thought, remembering their time together on New Earth, when she occasionally woke up screaming. "I'll get us something to drink. How about some tea?"

"Have my coffee rations run out already?"

"Okay, then. Coffee." He gave her a box of tissues as he made his way to the kitchen. "You had these kinds of nightmares on New Earth, too, remember?"

Her tone revealed her irritation with him when she replied. "I have bad dreams once in awhile, but who doesn't? Most Starfleet officers do, I imagine. Nightmares are nothing to lose any sleep about."

"Very funny." He set a tray of coffee, tea, and shortbread cookies on the table. They helped themselves to the light dessert in a silence that was suddenly uncomfortable. The easy flow of their early hours together had evaporated, and Chakotay decided that the time was right to ask her about her secretiveness. "When Voyager got home last year, I was sure I knew you better than I'd ever known anyone in my life," he said, finally.

"I felt the same way about you, and still do. We spent a lot of time together, and I've never worked so closely and for so many years with anyone else. There are times when I'm sure I could guess what your next words would be."

"I told you so much about the difficulties in my life--my troubled relationship with my dad, my guilt over the deaths of my family, my near suicidal fury as a Maquis." He was making a guess, but he was pretty sure that he would be right. "Yet, in all that time, you never admitted that your worst recurring nightmare was about the accident."

She froze, her eyes glaring at him over the top of her coffee mug until she gradually lowered it. "The accident?"

"The Terra Nova. I think XS-647A was its official designation."

She stiffened slightly, and then slowly and deliberately placed her mug on the table. Her eyes were cold, and her voice had that steely tone that her subordinates knew was a warning to tread carefully. She stood up and walked to the window, keeping her back to him. "I said I'd let you know when I was ready to discuss the accident, Chakotay, and the time isn't right."

"Kathryn, when will the time be right? It's been years."

"I try hard never to think about it."

"But you do think about it, don't you? Every day." She remained silent. "You can admit it to me. I've seen distress in your eyes dozens of times, at odd moments, even when everything was calm and quiet on the ship, and I wondered what you could be thinking about. I thought it might be Voyager's most recent crisis, or maybe guilt about the crew. But now, I know you thought of the accident, too. Even in the peaceful times, you were uneasy because of the guilt you carried."

She crossed her arms across her chest, but kept her back to him. "You can't know that."

"Oh, no? What about your continuous bouts of insomnia? The nightmares on New Earth? The hesitancy to go on test flights of the Delta Flyer? The tendency to lead any mission that was dangerous? Your tenacity at rescuing any and all members of the crew, even if you put Voyager herself in danger in the process?" She didn't answer him. "If I'm wrong, tell me so. Tell me what your nightmare was about right now."

She whirled to face him, livid at his insinuation. "The dreams are just a sign of my personal demons, Chakotay. This is pure speculation, and it's much too personal." She picked up the jacket and put it on, and then moved to the sofa for her boots. "This visit is over. Thanks for a wonderful time."

"I read the report on the crash."

She looked up at him in amazement. "It's classified!"

He shrugged. "Not as 'classified' as it once was, and I know people. Once research and development stopped working on your father's 'warp thrusters' concept, the report was very nearly declassified. In fact, my source said it would have been declassified five years ago except for the fact that the accident resulted in two fatalities."

"I'm not so sure the warp thrusters couldn't have worked properly, but that's neither here nor there." She leaned over to put on a boot, viciously pulling the zipper closed.

"It's a miracle you survived the crash."

"Did you not hear me?" She put on the other boot and stood up. "I don't talk about the crash."

"Did you not tell me about it because you don't trust me?"

She stood up and looked at the parka, shrugging it off and tossing it aside with an angry huff. "I trust you, surely you know that by now. Trust has nothing to do with it. "

"Really? I wonder. I told you about the last words I spoke to my father—words of bitterness and anger. I told you about finding the charred ashes on Dorvan where my family's home had been, and the blind rage that fed my decision to join the Maquis. I'm haunted by those memories, I have nightmares about them, but I find it a relief to share them with my trusted friends."

"Good for you," she said as she started for the door.

He circled the sofa, blocking her path to the doorway. "It's a well-known fact that sharing one's difficult memories lessens one's guilt."

"Well, thank you, Counselor Chakotay. But let me say that fact might not be true for everyone. I thought you knew better than to bring up subjects I prefer not to discuss. For me, retelling the story . . . or discussing it as we are now . . . will only make things worse."

He took her by the shoulders and looked her right in the eye. "Reliving a terrible memory isn't easy for anyone, Kathryn. But it's worse if you still have unresolved issues about it."

She shook off his hands and stepped away from him. "Unresolved issues? Like what?"

"You feel responsible for their deaths."

In spite of the defiant look she gave him, her eyes filled with tears. "You can't know how I feel."

"I think I can. You feel guilty for surviving when two people you loved died."

She was trembling as she turned away from him, and he was sure she was on the verge of tears. "The report concluded that the ship crashed because of a failure in the warp thrusters, right?"

"That's the theory," he answered.

Her voice was thick with emotion. "I was supposed to be monitoring the warp thrusters, Chakotay."

"Who says you weren't? The report says you recalled no details of what happened for several minutes prior to the malfunction. It also said that the problem was a design flaw--something you couldn't have caused."

"I know what I was supposed to be doing, but I failed to see the warning signs of such a complete failure."

"Kathryn, you don't know that it was your fault. You might have been right on top of the situation and still unable to prevent the crash."

She shook her head in defiance. "Then I didn't work fast enough. There should've been time to perform an emergency beam-out to the surface."

He turned her to face him. "You haven't read the report, have you?"

She kept her eyes downcast. "I don't need to."

"Look at me." She raised her head, but her eyes were defiant, troubled. "Total power loss, Kathryn. Total. There was no emergency transporter available."

"What about battery power?"

"The warp thrusters sent a surge through the whole power grid that fused the transporter's buffers. Battery power would've been useless."

She was still unwilling to believe him. "You're saying there were no transporters."

"There were no transporters."

She pulled away and tried to brush past him for the door. "I know better."

He caught her arm. "Kathryn, listen to me just a little while longer."

"I know what I know."

"What you know isn't based on the facts. I studied the details of the flight recorder. I even had B'Elanna look at it."

"You what?" She turned to face him, pulling his hand from her arm. "You had no right to show that report to someone else."

"I needed her help to reconstruct the timeline of the accident. We did dozens of simulations to check out our assumptions, and we think we know what really happened."

She put her hands on her ears. "This is pointless."

He pulled her hands away and gripped her wrists. "What the hell are you afraid of, Kathryn? Could you feel guiltier about the accident than you do right now? If B'Elanna and I said, 'Kathryn initiated emergency procedures three seconds too late,' would you blame yourself any more than you do now? Or maybe that's not it at all. Maybe you're afraid that you did nothing wrong? Maybe you're afraid to admit that it was out of your control to save them, and that you've spent nearly twenty years punishing yourself over something that was a simple, fatal accident?"

She twisted her hands free. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"You are afraid. You're afraid to hear the truth."

She poked him in the chest with two fingers on her right hand. "I'm afraid of nothing, Chakotay, and especially not the truth."

"Then hear me out."

She let her arm fall loosely to her side and started back into the living room. "All right. I'll listen."

He sat down beside her and kept his voice calm as he spoke, as cool and factual as he would have been if were giving her a routine report on the bridge. "When the warp thrusters malfunctioned, the pilot still had minimal maneuvering power in the aft portion of the ship. But those thrusters were too weak to break the fall of the entire ship, and both your dad and Justin knew it. However, they also knew that the aft thrusters had enough power to cushion the fall of half of the ship, and they knew that the emergency parachute could drop it gently to the surface.

"They worked together to deliberately position the ship so that it would hit the atmosphere at an angle that would break the ship neatly in half along the bulkhead in front of the engineering station. It's a typical weak point, as you know. They knew the thrusters would fire as soon as that portion of the ship—the part containing you—was in a tail down position."

She stared at him. "You can't know that they did that on purpose."

"The Hyperion tracked the crash with their long-range sensors, Kathryn, and the flight data recorder confirmed what they saw. The only explanation for the ship's orientation on atmospheric impact is that the pilot and copilot worked together to make sure the ship broke in half."

She looked away, thinking through his explanation. "You're saying that they deliberately sacrificed themselves to give me a chance to live? It's supposed to make me feel better to know that my dad and Justin purposely died to save me? I just feel worse than ever that I did nothing to help them."

"If the tables were turned, if you were the one with the ability to do something, anything, to save them, wouldn't you have willingly given your life to do it? Is it so strange to think that they loved you as much as you did them?"

She buried her face in her hands. "I didn't do anything to help them."

"Knowing you as I do, Kathryn, I'm sure you were trying to think of something. From where you were in the ship, there was very little that you could have done." He paused, watching her face as she processed his words. "Do you think they saved your life so you would feel guilty for the next eighty years? They saved your life because they wanted you to survive and find peace and happiness." Two large tears ran down her face as he continued. "When your half of the ship broke away, it started a nearly vertical descent, while the other section, the one that contained your dad and Justin, continued in an arc. The two pieces fell to the surface several kilometers away from each other. You were too far away to do anything to assist them after the crash."

She shook her head. "That can't be right. I remember watching their part of the ship sink in the water. I saw their faces looking at me, Chakotay. I still see their eyes in my dreams."

"What you see, Kathryn, is a dream. A nightmare. It couldn't have happened that way."

"But, I know what I saw."

He got up and walked to a table on the far side of the room, picking up a PADD and bringing it back to her. "Look at this diagram of the crash debris from the report. Here's where the aft section landed, and that red dot is where they found your unconscious body. Over here, almost two kilometers away, is where the fore section crashed into the icy lake and sank. Not only was their ship not visible from that distance, you never regained consciousness. There were no footprints in the snow around you when help arrived. You hadn't moved a millimeter."

"That can't be right."

"Kathryn, you can't dispute the facts."

Her hands trembled as she took the PADD from him and studied it. "This diagram is in proper scale?"

"Yes. In fact, that PADD has the whole report on it. I want you to read it."

She looked up at him in surprise. "Tell me who gave it to you."

"Admiral Paris. Like everyone else who knows and loves you, he thinks it's time for you to put this to rest. It's time for you to come to terms with what really happened and deal with the facts, not speculation or imagined events."

"You've talked to all these people about me? About this?"

"Most of them came to me, Kathryn. In fact, all of them did, except B'Elanna. They knew we'd worked closely for years and they assumed that we'd talked about it. They were hoping you'd found some peace and resolution."

She looked down at the PADD. "Are you doing this out of some misguided sense of pity?"

"Of course not. Since Voyager returned, I've learned a lot about you that you never told me yourself, things that have helped me understand you better than I ever did before. I've had to rethink dozens of conversations we had, reconsider all the assumptions I made about you for seven long years. I've discovered that you are even more fascinating than I thought you were, and I want to get to know the real Kathryn Janeway, not the one you allowed me to see on Voyager." He lifted her head and looked deep into her eyes. "I asked you here because I care about you--more than you know."

"Oh, Chakotay, after all these years?"

"After all these years."

She touched his face, her eyes luminous. "But now you know how damaged I am. You know that my heart is broken."

"At our age, whose heart isn't? We're spoiled by modern medicine. We heal horrible burns and wounds without leaving a scar. We replace missing arms and legs and eyes so well that others can hardly notice the difference." He gave her a tender smile. "But the human heart has scars that never disappear, and we're wrong to think that we can be the same again. You're a better person for all you've experienced, good and bad, Kathryn. It's all part of what makes you special to me."

"You can accept me like this? You don't resent the demons that haunt me?"

"Not any more than you resent the demons that torment me. But, I do worry about you. What do you feel when you find yourself in a snowy, icy environment like the planet where the Terra Nova went down? How do you react when you suddenly spy an iceberg or hear of a shuttle crash?"

She frowned. "Those terrible feelings all rush back at once. They nearly overwhelm me."

"That's why you have to continually face those feelings, Kathryn; you have to be ready for them. They can ambush you at the worst possible moment, and you have to find a way to deal with those memories when they force themselves upon you."

"And how in God's name do I do that?"

"Well, you could do something like this." He pulled her into an embrace. For a long moment, she seemed unwilling to respond, but then she relaxed into him and let the tears she'd been holding back flow freely down her face. He whispered into her ear, "You could come to me, or to any one else you trust, and you could tell me that you need a hug of reassurance, and that you need to be reminded that you're safe and loved and forgiven."

"Am I forgiven?" Her voice was muffled by his chest.

"Don't you think your dad and Justin would forgive you?"

She was quiet a moment, and then whispered, "I know they would."

"Then you have to accept that forgiveness. And you have to be as kind to Kathryn as they would be if they were here."

She snuggled into his arms, relishing the warmth of his body. "This could become addictive. You wouldn't get tired of hugging me and reminding me of all that?"

"Of course not." He gently rubbed her back as he buried his face in her hair. "But first, Kathryn, read the report. And then look at B'Elanna's reconstruction of the accident."

Her voice was muffled, her face in his chest. "I can't bear to read it."

"I'll stay here with you while you do, and you can stay here with me as long as you need to afterwards. I want to help you, if you'll let me. Please, Kathryn, you must do this. Repressed memories are a disaster waiting to happen."

She nodded and settled against him as she reopened the PADD to the beginning of the report, reading slowly and stopping at times to stare blindly into the distance. Chakotay waited, barely moving, as he watched her work through the pages of raw data and analysis. He worried when her breathing quickened as she came across the more painful details. At long last she laid the PADD aside and turned to him, tears spilling from her eyes.

"Is that really how it was?"

"Those are the facts. There was nothing you could have done to save them," he replied as he gathered her into his arms again and let her sob into his shoulder, all the while reminding her of how much her father and Justin had loved her, how much they would want her to find happiness and peace, not this constant remorse and guilt.

Hours passed before they drew apart. Exhausted by the emotional trauma of the experience, Kathryn lay down on the sofa and stared at the fire while Chakotay fixed them a midnight snack of soup, fresh bread, and tea. When they finished eating, he sat on the sofa with her head in his lap and listened to her as she talked about the accident and described in horrible detail the recurring nightmare in which she watched her father and Justin die. When she finally drifted off to sleep, he covered her with a blanket and sat in a chair to keep vigil over her.

She looked small and fragile, almost like a child, and when she grew restless, as if she might be having a nightmare, he knelt on the floor beside her, brushing her hair away from her face or rubbing her back as he quietly reminded her that she was not alone. Several times, she opened her eyes and placed a hand against his cheek with a grateful smile before drifting back to sleep. He hoped and prayed that at long last her long journey toward healing had begun.

He hoped she had the strength to get through the rest of the healing process.


	7. Broken Hearts 7

Broken Hearts

Chapter 7

March 9, 2379

Terazed V

Chakotay stood in the shade of the sun fly fingering the isolinear chip in his pocket as he watched a pair of birds circle high overhead. The courier had brought the chip across the divide with the daily supplies, and Chakotay hoped it was a message from Kathryn. She'd contacted him less and less often in the last few weeks, and he was worried that her silence might be a bad omen. Distracted by his thoughts, he picked up his scanner and absently began to check its settings.

Rex Detmer, his partner at the dig, looked up at him from inside the tent and shook his head in dismay. He stood up, took the scanner from him, and gestured toward their camp. "Chakotay, you might as well go read the message. We both know you won't get a thing accomplished until you do. You haven't heard from her in three or four days, right?"

"It might not even be from her," Chakotay protested, embarrassed that Rex so easily guessed the source of his melancholy. "Maybe it's from work."

Rex grinned, remembering the flurry of messages between his partner and Kathryn Janeway in their ten-week stay on Terazed. "I'm betting it's from her. I haven't seen such devoted pen pals since I went to college and left my best gal at home."

"It's not like that, Rex," Chakotay argued, aware of a hot blush crawling up his neck. "We served together every day for over seven years on Voyager, and we're used to talking to each other on a regular basis."

"Well, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder." Rex studied him, wondering if he knew how obvious it was that he was in love with his former captain. "We're almost finished for the day. Go read it, Chakotay. I'll clean up. I don't have an hour's work here."

"Thanks. I owe you one." He clapped Rex on the shoulder and started up the hill to the tents that had been his home for over two months. Soon enough, he'd slide the chip into a reader and find out if it was, in fact, from Kathryn.

Chakotay believed that the statement "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was a truism that was both naïve and erroneous. His experience in Starfleet had proven that absence merely gave each party the opportunity to fall for someone new. Of course, that statement assumed that the couple was romantically involved before the separation occurred. In this case, he and Kathryn had shared the same close friendship they'd had for so many years on Voyager.

His relationship with Kathryn Janeway had never fit a mold and had developed in starts and stops over the years. Once they'd returned to the Alpha Quadrant, he'd expected that they would grow apart, that their busy lives would interfere with the intimacy of their partnership on Voyager, but he had suddenly found himself caught up in her past, fascinated and troubled by her history.

The three months following her crisis in his apartment had been stressful for Kathryn and everyone who knew her. Reading and accepting the facts of the accident report constituted the beginning of a long, painful process toward healing, and Kathryn had been relentless in pursuing the truth once she'd opened her mind to it. Chakotay had supported her every way he could.

He remembered the night that Kathryn arrived at his door in mid-October, just two weeks after their first emotional discussion of the Terra Nova accident. The doorbell rang just after midnight on a blustery rainy night, and he opened the door to find her shivering in the darkness, wearing nothing but a dripping sweat suit and tennis shoes, a look of panic on her face.

"I should have called ahead," she stammered, her teeth chattering in the cold. "I left my apartment in such a rush that I didn't even check the time, and it just occurred to me that you might be asleep."

"Whether I'm awake or not doesn't matter. If you need to see me, just come see me." He opened the door farther and invited her in. He knew that she would only come to his apartment in the middle of the night for good reason. "Come in before you freeze."

She changed out of her wet clothes and into a set of his own warm fleece workout gear while her things dried in the 'fresher, and then sat down in front of the fire with a big mug of hot tea. He smiled at the sight of a Starfleet admiral wearing oversized clothing with the arms and legs rolled up, looking like a waif he might have rescued from the cold. As he sat down beside her, he hoped her impromptu visit was not a signal of another difficult, tearful night.

She talked excitedly about the counseling she'd undergone, thanking him again for making her come to terms with her guilt and move ahead with her life. She told him that he was right when he said she needed to go through the grieving process if she hoped to find closure, and then she said, "My counselor thinks your suggestion is the answer."

"My suggestion?" He thought about what she could mean, and then realized that she must want to have a memorial at long last. Tremendously relieved by this turn of events, he gave her a grin. "A memorial? This is very good news. Having a ceremony would do all of you a lot of good, even Phoebe and your mom. Every culture has these rites to help those left behind say their farewells and move on."

"That's what I'm hoping, although I'm afraid I'll always be haunted by survivor's guilt."

"Once you've faced reality, you can learn to deal with it. I have a confession to make." He waited as she looked up at him expectantly. "I'm still haunted by survivor guilt, and I still have nightmares, though they've grown less frequent over the years."

"Nightmares about what happened to your family?"

He nodded. "I told you that I went to Dorvan right after I resigned from Starfleet and that I performed the funeral rites of my people as an act of closure, but I never told you what I found on the planet." He closed his eyes as the memory of the devastation assaulted him, and Kathryn put a hand on his arm in comfort.

"I saw what the Cardassians did to Bajor," she said. "If Dorvan was anything like that, I can imagine how terrible it must have been."

He shook his head. "I saw what they did to Bajor, too, stealing their valuable mineral deposits, ruining their farmland, enslaving the populace, using its star system for their tactical advantage against the Federation. Since Dorvan offered them no such value, they showed no such restraint."

"Restraint?" She set the mug on the table and turned toward him on the sofa. "Worse than Bajor?"

"I'd hoped to find the remains of my people to use in the tribal memorial ceremony. Oh, I knew the bodies would probably be gone, but I thought I could use some artifacts to represent them--a blanket, a cooking pot, a bit of clothing." He paused, his face a mask of pain. "There was nothing left on the planet that would indicate it had ever been populated. The few scattered villages were totally gone, as were the roads connecting them. The buildings were pulverized into dust, and the people . . . ." Tears sprung to his eyes. "There weren't even ashes left behind. There was nothing there. They didn't leave single trace."

"My God," she whispered, slipping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. "I had no idea the destruction was so complete."

"I felt so guilty that they were killed like that, like worthless, diseased animals, murdered without remorse or respect. All I could think was that I should have done something, anything, to protect them from such evil."

"You warned them, Chakotay. You sent them a message advising them to return to Trebus when the Federation withdrew their active support of the colony. Right?"

"I tried to warn them. I sent my family a message, but I'd lost my father's confidence. He felt I had deserted my people and had no right to advise them. He was the oldest son in our line, and as his oldest son, it was my duty to counsel them, but I was to do so every day, in all things, not just once in twenty years from half a galaxy away."

"But you tried to warn them, at least."

He closed his eyes sadly. "I remember quite well my father's response, at least I remember what my younger sister, Rianna, reported to me. She said she played my warning for him on the equipment I'd sent them, and he listened impassively. At first she thought he hadn't grasped the meaning of my words. I spoke in Federation Standard, not in our native language, and he often pretended not to understand. When the message ended, he looked up at her and said, 'There's a buzzing in my ears. The insects are bad this summer.' And then he left the house and refused to let her play the warning again."

Kathryn shook her head in dismay. "Rianna is the sister who survived?"

"Yes. She moved to Trebus to get married a few weeks before the attack. She's the only blood relative I have left."

"Oh, Chakotay. I know I've said this before, but I'm so sorry."

"Like you, Kathryn, I feel guilty for being alive when those I loved died so senselessly. I even contemplated suicide." He took her hand, rubbing it absently as he spoke. "You directed your guilt inward and focused your energies on your career as a way to atone for your guilt. I simply became angry and dedicated myself to revenge as a member of the Maquis. At least the ceremony let me express my regrets and honor them as my people are accustomed to doing."

"So it was a positive experience in spite of everything?"

He nodded. "It was a gesture, but an important one."

"Good," she brightened considerably, gripping his hand tightly. "Then you'll help me?"

"I'd be happy to help you with the ceremony."

"Not the ceremony--that will be a standard Starfleet service. I want you to help me recover the bodies."

He felt the blood rush from his face. "After all this time?"

"The crash occurred in the polar ice cap. The heat of the ship's reentry melted the upper layer of the ocean. Once the ship sank, the ice reformed and preserved the bodies." At his incredulous look, she continued. "Starfleet studied the ship from the surface when they were investigating the crash, and the scans indicated that the bodies were perfectly preserved. But, Dad always said that a crash site should be the burial site, and so Mom told them to leave the bodies there."

"Do you think it's a good idea to recover them now?"

"Our tradition is to bury the remains, Chakotay."

"And you mean to recover the bodies yourself?"

"Since they died in the line of duty, Starfleet has agreed to provide any assistance needed, and I think the ceremony would be much more meaningful if we actually buried the bodies. Don't you?" She looked up at him, hope in her eyes.

"I guess so. But, do you think it's a good idea for you to return to the scene of the accident? What does your counselor say about this?"

She narrowed her eyes slightly, resorting to the bravado she used whenever he challenged one of her ideas. "I haven't talked to her about it yet, because it just occurred to me. But, I can't imagine sitting here at home and letting someone else retrieve them. In fact, I need to do it, Chakotay, for quite a few reasons."

"You won't let me do it for you?" he volunteered, even though he recognized the obstinacy he'd seen dozens of times on Voyager. She'd made up her mind, and the best he could do was to go with her and help her with whatever problems that beset her in the process. When he saw the cold blue of her eyes, he sighed in resignation. "All right, I'll help you."

A few weeks later, they traveled to Tau Ceti, perhaps the coldest planet Chakotay had ever visited. After the orbiting ship melted the upper surface of the frozen ocean with carefully controlled phaser blasts, he and Kathryn transported down to watch as the forward section of the Terra Nova was tractored to the surface of the icy black water and beamed to the cargo hold on the ship. Fortunately, the bodies still trapped inside were not visible as the fractured ship rose to the surface. Chakotay shuddered to think how Kathryn might have reacted to a scene so close to her familiar nightmare--the ship sticking up from the water with the faces of the two men visible to her.

Kathryn lingered near the shattered ice cap a long time after the salvage operation ended, and Chakotay waited silently by her side until he could no longer feel his fingers and toes in spite of the Starfleet arctic gear he wore. When he could stand the cold no longer, he broke the silence. "Kathryn, is there anything else you want to do here? We should beam back to the ship pretty soon, don't you think?"

She'd jerked at his words, as if she'd forgotten that there was anyone with her, and then she'd turned to him. "I'd like to see where they found me."

"That can be done." He reached for his commbadge. "I'll have the ship beam us there."

"No," she insisted, shaking her head. "I want to walk."

"But, Kathryn, it's quite a hike in this cold."

Here eyes were impassive, and he knew there would be no compromise. "The exercise will warm us up."

He'd anticipated that something like this might occur, so he opened his tricorder, called up the coordinates, and led her away from the rescue site. Although the hike was only a couple of kilometers, the rough terrain slowed them down. They had to go around huge fissures in the ice, skirt regions that were too slick to cross, and climb mound after mound of drifted snow and ice. It was arduous work that extended a short hike into nearly an hour of steady walking, climbing, and occasional spectacular falls. When they arrived at the second site, Chakotay was sweating profusely, sore from more than one tumble, and out of breath. At least, he thought, Kathryn had been correct about the hike warming them up.

They stood still, watching their breaths plume out before them as they took in the new location, and each drank the last of the water they'd brought with them. Chakotay studied the readout on his tricorder, oriented himself to the landmarks, and pointed toward a snow drift that towered overhead. "The aft section was over there," he told her, "bottom down against that cliff." He took a few steps away from her. "You were found just about here, face down in the snow."

She walked to the spot in the snow that he'd indicated, and then she looked back toward their previous location. The recovery site was blocked from view by two long ridges of ice and snow.

"I couldn't have seen them sink into the water from here."

"No, you couldn't have. Not at this distance or from this perspective."

"And I couldn't have walked to them, either."

"Over the terrain we just covered?" Chakotay laughed. "You were badly injured, Kathryn. It took us an hour to walk here, and we're in good health."

She'd turned to him, her eyes troubled. "But, Chakotay, the nightmare seems so real to me. I can see the ship sinking. I can see their faces."

"That's the way nightmares are, Kathryn. They take fragments from our reality and reshape them to fit some perverse notion of their own." He put his arm around her. "I'm sure you wanted to save them, and so your subconscious created a scenario where you had that chance. It just wasn't true."

"The counselor thinks I might have overheard the doctors and nurses talking about the crash site when I was in and out of consciousness right after my rescue. I probably misunderstood what they said, or my mind took some of the facts I heard and changed them into what I wanted them to be."

"Well, however it happened, now you know the truth."

She shivered, as if she had finally become conscious of the cold, or perhaps because she was finally seeing the accident as it had actually occurred. "I know the truth. I just have to make myself believe it."

As difficult as the trip to Tau Ceti had been, the recovery of the remains was not the most distressing event she'd endured during that critical mourning period. The bodies were in good enough condition to allow for open caskets, if the family desired. When they initially decided against it, Chakotay had been relieved, but then Kathryn opted for a quick, private viewing. He tried to talk her out of it, telling her that nothing could prepare her for the shock of seeing her father's and Justin's bodies after all these years. He believed she was asking too much of herself, but she'd insisted that she needed to see them as a necessary step in the grieving process and to convince herself that they were gone.

The graveside memorial service took place on a cold, grey November day that threatened snow. Chakotay was the only non-Janeway invited, and so he'd kept to the fringes of the gathering, satisfied to watch the event from a respectful distance. Before they'd left the mortuary, Kathryn had avoided looking into the caskets, and he'd fervently hoped she'd changed her mind, but then, putting her arms around Gretchen's and Phoebe's waists, she'd approached the remains as Chakotay watched, holding his breath. She paused between the two caskets for a moment as if frozen, and then she'd quickly turned away from the sight, slipping her sunglasses into place to disguise her distress, and he'd ground his teeth in frustration. She was upset, just as he had thought she would be, and he wished he'd been more vocal about his objection.

She seemed to operate on "auto-pilot" the rest of the day, standing like a phantom between her mother and Phoebe during the graveside service and responding in monosyllables to expressions of comfort during the meal that followed. She was silent when he escorted her back to her apartment in San Francisco, although she spoke just enough to tell him how much she'd appreciated his support in the last several weeks, and then she gave him a fierce hug as he prepared to leave.

"My counselor believes I'm going to recover completely," she told him as he left her at her door, lifting her head with defiant determination. "And Starfleet is giving me some time to focus on my treatment."

"I hope so, Kathryn. If anyone can do it, you can." He'd given her a last gentle hug, kissed her on the top of the head, and left her there, alone, to face her demons.

It was good luck that the service occurred when it did, because the preparations for Voyager's first reunion in December had provided some much-needed distraction in the ensuing weeks. A surprisingly large number of the crew was still in the area, and the love and affection that they showered on their former captain had done much to soothe her aching soul. But the reunion had also reminded her of the isolation and loneliness she'd endured during those seven years, and it reopened dozens of unhealed wounds and unforgotten regrets that threatened to spiral her into another depression.

Disturbed by her fragility, Chakotay was ready to cancel his planned trip to Terazed when Kathryn's counselor had called him and told him that it was time for her to face her grief without his help. "She needs time alone to grieve and come to terms with her past," the counselor said. "Only after she does that will she be ready to move forward."

And so, just days after the reunion ended, Chakotay left for his three-month dig on Terrazed V. Leaving her had been one of the most difficult things he'd ever done. He'd spent his last day with her in Indiana, and the snow and ice they'd walked through as she'd accompanied him to the transport station that day had been a painful reminder of their visit to Tau Ceti a few weeks earlier.

As if she'd read his mind, Kathryn had gently reassured him that he had nothing to worry about. She'd taken his arm affectionately and given him a brilliant smile with no shadow of remorse. "This is what winter is like in Indiana, Chakotay. It seems like a normal part of home to me."

He'd gone over these memories dozens of times since his arrival on Terrazed, often lying awake for hours gazing through a flap in his tent at the brilliant stars overhead. She'd shown no hint of panic or depression, and, at first, he'd been encouraged by her behavior. But then, as time passed, he began to wonder if she wanted him to go so she could distance herself from him or if she missed him half as much as he missed her.

They'd promised to keep in touch, but they soon discovered that it was impossible to talk via subspace because of the discrepancies in their work schedules and the bizarre time differences between Earth and Terazed. Soon, they settled into the practice of sending video or text messages to each other in their free time, often on a daily basis. Chakotay got used to carrying a PADD with him that contained their most recent communication and found himself reading and rereading her messages whenever he had a free moment. During the boring moments of the dig, he entertained himself by composing in his head his own detailed replies to her last message and imagining her possible response.

Much to his surprise, their separation seemed to bring them closer. It allowed them to put aside the barriers they had carefully constructed on Voyager and it gave him a much-needed detachment from her psychological treatment. They wrote initially as friends, good friends, who knew and trusted each other implicitly. He reminded himself that his goal was to help her shed the guilt she'd carried for so many years, to be a sounding board and a safe haven for her when she felt overwhelmed and besieged by memories, real or imagined. He hadn't done this to pursue a relationship, he told himself, and he had no right to feel mistreated because it hadn't happened.

Very quickly, though, he began to appreciate how deeply their personal relationship on Voyager had been distorted by two unavoidable and irreconcilable facts--the fact that she had been his commanding officer and the fact that they had shared an incredibly passionate attraction toward each other. Now, when he talked to her in this more distant manner, he found himself confessing thoughts and feelings in ways that would never have been possible in person. And he sensed that she was doing the same when she wrote to him, revealing a vulnerability and sensitivity that he had always suspected was hidden behind her "captain's mask."

After just ten short weeks, he found that she had come to mean more to him than anyone else he'd ever known. He marveled at her brilliant scientific mind, her solemn need to do the right thing, her gentle affection for her friends and family, her scathing sense of humor, and her iron will and strength of character. If she had fascinated him before, he now found himself obsessed with her and anxious to receive the next message containing her thoughts and words.

He'd fallen in love with her all over again. And that meant that she once again had the power to break his heart.

He stepped out of the hot, midday sun and into the refreshing shade of his tent, the air cooled and humidified by a tiny solar-powered unit that serviced four tents. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and sat down to remove his shoes, breathing deeply to help cool his body and relax his mood. He wanted to believe that his heart was racing because of the heat and the steep grade of the hill, but he knew better. He was excited about the message, and also afraid of what it might contain.

He'd forgotten that telling someone his deepest fears and thoughts inevitably resulted in the chance that the person might betray his trust or fail to return his affection. He hadn't realized how much power Kathryn had over him until her messages started coming sporadically a few weeks earlier, until they'd been shorter, less detailed, less revealing, until Kathryn seemed happier, more upbeat than he'd ever seen her before. He wanted her to be happy, was even relieved to see her so much better, but one thought reverberated through his mind--her most recent improvement had had nothing to do with him.

He put on his slippers, poured himself a liberal serving of juice, and sat down at his computer to access the chip, gratified to see that it was a video message for once. The screen filled with her face, but he could see that she was in her house in San Francisco, and reminded himself that the videos were done in San Francisco while the audio-only contacts almost always came from her mother's house in Indiana. He wondered why.

He froze the screen so he could study her face. She was smiling, relaxed, and happy--all of those qualities shone through the look on her face and the glow in her eyes. The drawn, tired expression and the dark circles under her eyes had disappeared completely since he'd last seen her in person, and she was wearing her hair looser, less controlled, so that it curled on her shoulders and around her face in an alluring manner. She was beautiful, he realized, a classic Irish colleen with flashing blue eyes, porcelain skin, and cinnamon freckles on her nose and shoulders.

He activated the message, and her smile widened as she spoke to him, telling him of her upcoming assignment with Starfleet, passing on a few tidbits of Voyager gossip, speculating on a couple of news items, and, all too soon, bringing the message to an end.

"I wish I could go on," she explained, looking remorseful, "there's so much I want to tell you, but I need to beam to Indiana before dark. I have March 20th circled in red on my calendar and am so anxious to see you. I have a surprise for you that I hope you like. I miss you. Do you realize that we've never been apart this long before? Please don't stay a minute longer than you have to. See you on the twentieth." She gave him the classic Academy left-hand salute and signed off.

Chakotay sat in the cool darkness staring at the blank screen, fighting back his disappointment. What was it in Indiana that was taking so much of her time? Perhaps she was just reconnecting with her mother and their family. Maybe she was escaping the pressure and lure of Starfleet to get some much-needed rest in the quiet countryside. He buried his face in his hands. Maybe she'd met another man.

How had he let this situation go from a simple desire to help a friend to an unrequited love affair? He felt like such a fool, an adolescent fool. He didn't want to believe that Kathryn would let him down or withdraw from him again as she had done on Voyager. He wanted to believe that she would soon admit that she loved him, that they could finally explore the attraction that had simmered beneath the surface from the first day they met. He shuddered to think how much power she held over him, knowing that she could easily crush him with a thoughtless word or inadvertent gesture. With his anxiety threatening to overwhelm him, Chakotay wondered if he would lose her again, and this time forever?

When Rex Detmer toiled up the hill from the dig an hour later, Chakotay was still sitting at his desk staring at the blank screen. Rex stepped into his partner's tent and slumped into the hammock chair with a sigh of relief. "Well," he asked, "was the message from who I thought it was?"

"You mean from Kathryn?" Chakotay said, leaning back in his chair with a groan and rubbing his eyes with his hands. "Yeah, it was from her."

"That's great." Rex studied his friend. He had sensed in Chakotay a rising distress about this woman who seemed so important to his happiness. Chakotay obviously had it bad, and things seemed to be getting worse instead of better. "Hey, I was thinking that we could work straight through the weekend and finish up early next week. In fact," he leaned forward, picking up the cube calendar by Chakotay's desk and checking the dates, "I don't see why you couldn't leave by the twelfth, if you wanted."

Chakotay's eyes gleamed with anticipation. "I'd hate to leave you with all the cleanup work, Rex."

"I'll get even with you later." He stood up and stretched. "For one thing, starting tonight you can do all the cooking."

"You have a deal," Chakotay replied, his face breaking into a grin as he reached for his shoes. He was already imagining Kathryn's reaction when he told her he'd be home several days early, already picturing himself arriving in San Francisco and finding her waiting for him, a smile of joyous relief on her face. "How about a big salad, spaghetti, and blueberry cheesecake?"

"That'll do for starters," Rex chuckled. Chakotay walked past him toward the tent that housed the kitchen, and Rex took the opportunity to pick up a small frame that held a picture of Kathryn and Chakotay at the recent Voyager reunion. "Don't break his heart, Kathryn," he murmured. "Please don't break his heart."


	8. Broken Hearts 8

Broken Hearts

Chapter 8

March 17, 2379

Indiana

Chakotay tried for three days to reach Kathryn Janeway through subspace. Her office in San Francisco referred him to her sister's in Chicago, her brother-in-law in Chicago said she had left for Indiana, and her mother claimed she was in Paris for a series of meetings. He was already on the first leg of his trip to Earth before he finally caught up with her in a temporary office in Paris, and he wasn't surprised that she was still at work, even though it was well after midnight there. The video revealed behind her the clutter of a busy office stacked with PADDs and littered with coffee cups, and her brisk businesslike attitude when she answered, while familiar, caught him off-guard.

"This is Admiral Janeway," she said, barely glancing at the screen. Then her eyes widened and she didn't even try to mask her surprise. "Chakotay! Where are you?"

"On my way to Starbase 147. Rex volunteered to shut down the dig alone so I could come back early, and I was able to get on the direct shuttle. I should beam into San Francisco on the fifteenth."

"The fifteenth? You mean Thursday? I thought you were arriving next week!" Her voice rose in undisguised dismay. "Chakotay, I'm completely swamped here through Friday night, and then I have to go straight to Mom's house in Indiana for the weekend."

He felt his heart lurch when he realized that she wouldn't be meeting him, but tried to put up a good front to hide his disappointment. "Well, that's okay. I understand that you already have plans."

"I overloaded my schedule this week so I could have a few days off when you arrived next week, but that means that I'm working ungodly hours now. I'm being briefed for my new assignment, meeting my contacts . . . well, you know how it is." She frowned at him and brought her hand up to rub her temple. "Damn. I'm sorry I won't be there Thursday night."

"Really, Kathryn, it's okay. Maybe you can come over Saturday or Sunday?"

She grinned. "I have a better idea. Why don't you come to Mom's house Saturday morning? I told you I have a surprise waiting for you, and I'd appreciate the company."

"Okay, that will work. What time should I arrive?"

"I'm not getting there until late Friday night, and I know, after this week, I'm going to need a good night's sleep. Let's make it about noon, okay?"

"Noon Saturday, then."

"I'm looking forward to it. Safe travels, Chakotay." Behind her, he could see an aide trying to catch her attention. She glanced over her shoulder and said to him, "I'll be right there, Lieutenant." She looked back at the screen with a frustrated grimace. "I have to go. See you soon."

"See you Saturday," he said as her face was replaced with the familiar blue Federation emblem. He sat there in his tiny compartment and struggled to keep from feeling sorry for himself. It wasn't Kathryn's fault that he had rearranged his schedule so that he arrived while she was out of town, and he shouldn't blame her for not being able to rearrange her plans on such short notice. He told himself to accept her explanation and move on. After all, she'd agreed to see him at the first opportunity.

Chakotay's apartment was cold, empty, and dusty when he arrived in San Francisco late Thursday evening. Not even finding Kathryn's welcome home message waiting for him improved his mood or the foreboding that their relationship had changed forever. In spite of his best efforts to stay upbeat, he felt more depressed and lonely than he had in years and wished he'd contacted Tom and B'Elanna or anyone from Voyager to meet him and welcome him home. After a long, hot shower, he replicated some food and sat down to watch the news reports before going to bed. He'd finished his meal and was about to turn in when Kathryn Janeway's face appeared on the screen.

He sat up and reran the news item at slow speed, carefully watching for Kathryn's brief appearance as the camera scanned the crowd. There had been a diplomatic function in Paris earlier that evening, and she had been in attendance, accompanied by a man whom Chakotay recognized as Admiral Steve Lefebvre, assigned for years to the Romulan desk at Starfleet. Lefebvre was also known to be one of the most eligible bachelors in the Federation, a handsome, charming rake who was a legend in his own mind, if Chakotay guessed right.

Kathryn had been unable to welcome him home because she had a date with Steve Lefebvre. He turned off the screen and sat in the darkness of the apartment feeling sorry for himself.

Saturday morning, Chakotay beamed into the transporter station in Bloomington, Indiana, and began the short walk toward the Janeway homestead, his mind filled with memories of his last visit there three months earlier. He had spent that last day with Kathryn and her mother, and Kathryn had accompanied him to this same transporter station for a sorrowful goodbye. He'd worried that his absence was coming at a crucial time in her recovery, but her counselor thought she needed some time alone. Three months didn't seem like a very long time, and yet it was their first significant period of separation in eight years.

Her counselor had been instrumental in her mourning process, of course, but Kathryn had also leaned heavily on Chakotay, especially during the crucial months of November and December. While he had been thrilled to help her, he feared that her dependency might become yet another barrier between them. And so he'd taken the assignment, with the counselor's blessing, and he'd hoped that their separation might help them decide whether or not they could ever be together.

He studied the austere landscape of late winter in Indiana as he walked. The trees were bare and the countryside was a study in browns and drab green, but at least the snow and ice of December was gone. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he started down the familiar path toward the Janeway household. When she had first invited him, he imagined a weekend alone with her. After seeing her on the news Thursday night, he knew he had been naïve.

"A fool's born every minute," he muttered as he walked up the steps and paused at the front door. No one answered when he rang the bell, and so he trudged around to the side of the house to see if she might be outdoors. He stood at the picket fence and gazed at the small tool shed at the foot of the yard, conscious of the sounds of . . . barking? "Kathryn? Are you out here?"

Instead of a human response, he was greeted by a litter of small puppies that raced from the shed at full tilt and became a squirming mass of black bodies and wagging tails yapping for his attention as they jumped against the fence. Behind them, Gretchen's black Labrador retriever, Midnight, sauntered out of the shed and, with a look of great weariness, ambled toward him, as well.

"Midnight," Chakotay said, giving the familiar dog a scratch under her chin, "your puppies are beautiful! But so many! How did you ever feed them?"

"They took turns." Kathryn had walked from the shed while he was busy admiring the dogs, and he felt his heart lurch in his chest when he saw the huge smile on her face. "Surprise!"

"The puppies are the surprise?" he asked, relief in his voice. Her smile widened, and he remembered just how compelling her loveliness was, especially when she was dressed casually and wore her long hair down around her face. For a moment, he was so taken with her that he couldn't speak, but then he said, without thinking, "Kathryn, you're beautiful."

"I'm glad you think so," she answered, her eyes sparkling. "I was going to say the same thing about you." She plowed through the mass of wriggling puppies until she stood right in front of him, and then, without a moment's hesitation, she put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. "Welcome home, Chakotay. I've missed you so much."

He held her as close as he could with the fence between them. "I missed you, too."

They stood there for nearly a minute before several puppies snagged Kathryn's coat with their teeth and forced her to pull away. "These little brutes want their share of your attention," she laughed as she scooped a black bundle into her arms and held him up for Chakotay's inspection.

"They're adorable." He took the pup from her and carried it to the gate where Kathryn struggled to let him into the yard without letting the other puppies out. "You didn't tell me Midnight had a litter. How many?"

"Twelve puppies. Nine females and three males. Mom bred her in December as a surprise, but she had no idea how much work the pups would be at her age. I've spent every free moment here trying to help her."

"So that's why you've been here so much of the time."

"That's why. They're just over four weeks old." She gave the pup he held an affectionate pat. "I'm hoping you'll help me pick out which puppy to keep."

He sat down on the back step and let rest of the chubby pups crawl all over him as Midnight watched with feigned indifference. "You're the dog expert, Kathryn, not me."

"I'd love to keep them all," she chuckled as she sat down beside him and picked up another puppy for a closer examination. How she could tell them apart was a mystery to him, but Kathryn chattered about the strengths and weaknesses of each pup, and he marveled at how easily they had slipped into the comfortable and precious friendship of their recent past. She was relaxed and animated as she talked, and he soon learned that she had even been present at the puppies' whelping. "It took her five long hours to have these pups," she said with a sigh. "Poor Midnight."

"Kathryn, are you going to be able to let eleven of your babies go?"

She gave him a wink. "Technically, I'm not letting them go. Phoebe's boys are getting one. And the other ten are going to the winners of a lottery among Voyager's crew."

"So they'll be in the family, at least."

"And God help them if they don't treat my babies well," she replied with a wink, and then grew solemn. "I apologize for not meeting you Thursday night."

He swallowed as an irrational wave a jealousy swept over him. "I saw the news report of the reception and picked you out of the crowd."

"So you saw I was with that lothario, Lefebvre," she groaned.

"Lothario?"

"Phoebe would say that he considers himself 'God's gift to women.' But not this woman." She rolled her eyes. "Although the assignment hasn't been announced yet, I'm taking over the Romulan desk from him in a couple of weeks. I wish I could say that working with him has been a pleasure. The rumor that he has a woman in every star system is not exaggerated. I think he even has one on every continent."

"So it wasn't a date?" he asked, embarrassed of the emotional twinge in his voice.

"No, Chakotay, it wasn't a date." She regarded him closely, a small smile on her face. "Were you jealous?"

"I just missed you, that's all."

"Good." She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze, and then stood up and shooed the puppies back toward their mother. "Let's go inside where it's warmer."

The previous summer, the back porch's windows had been screened to let in the warm summer breezes and keep out the mosquitoes; now the screens had been replaced with insulated windows that kept the room warm and cozy. They relaxed on the sofa and enjoyed the view of the puppies as they romped in the yard.

"Mom left early this morning to watch the boys while Phoebe and John move into a larger house in Chicago. I'm here puppy-sitting for the weekend."

"Tough duty for Grandma," he joked, "watching those boys."

"You have no idea. What trouble one of them doesn't think of the other does."

After a few minutes, Kathryn brought out a tray that held a lunch her mother had left for them, and they ate in a leisurely manner while he gave her added details about the dig on Terazed. They continued to talk as they cleaned up the dishes and then returned to the porch to watch the dreary afternoon end as they shared coffee and pecan pie. Midnight strolled through the yard trailing her puppies behind her until they disappeared into the shed for a "snack."

"She's a good mother," Kathryn said. "Very patient with their constant harassment." She sighed and leaned against him. Chakotay could tell from the tone of her voice that they were about to delve into sensitive topics. "You said once that you still have bad dreams about Dorvan. What do you do when the nightmares come?"

"I usually get out of bed and get some exercise. It helps me get rid of my frustrations and feelings of guilt."

"You don't expect me to take up boxing, I hope," she grinned, thinking of his penchant for sparring in Voyager's holodeck gym whenever he was troubled.

He gave her a sad look, for she was admitting to having nightmares, too. "No, that's not your style. But, you could play velocity, or, when you bring your puppy to San Francisco, take a good long walk along the Embarcadero." They sat quietly awhile, watching two fat pups tumble into the yard to play tug of war with a piece of rope. He took her hand, lacing her fingers through his own. "You're still having bad dreams? You seem so much better, Kathryn, so much more at ease with yourself."

"I am much better. There are still times when I am nearly overwhelmed by guilt, but it helps to visit their graves and . . . well, I talk to them about it. I hope you don't think I'm crazy."

"Not at all. Talking like that is a very healthy way to work through your problems." He gave her a reassuring smile. "Confession is good for the soul, you know."

"So they say." She grew quiet, disengaged her hand to pick up her coffee cup. She seemed troubled at first, but after a few moments her expression softened and she turned to him with a shy smile. "I've been able to look past the accident these last few months, and it's occurred to me that I'd feel better if I made a confession to you, as well."

"A confession about what?"

"About the way I treated you on Voyager."

He frowned. "I can't think of anything you could possibly feel guilty about."

"Well, I can," she said, putting down the mug and getting up to pace. "I told you that I took advantage of Mark. He was an old family friend, and he was willing to take a distant second place to my career without a word of complaint. When I'd leave on a mission, I habitually left my unfinished business up to him, and he always came through. When Voyager's mission to the Badlands came up, he took my dog, Molly, to his apartment because she was pregnant and needed special care. When I didn't come back, he raised the puppies, found them good homes, and kept Molly until she died."

"He loved you."

"Yes, he did. And I thought I loved him back, but I was fooling myself, Chakotay. How many 'true loves' stay engaged for years without even discussing a wedding date? How many are together for twelve years and still have separate apartments!"

"He kept you from getting involved with anyone again."

She nodded. "The thought of losing anyone else I loved terrified me."

"That's a perfectly understandable reaction to what you'd been through."

"And sheer cowardice. I didn't believe that I deserved to love and be loved that way again. I'd let myself feel only so much, but then pull away. Over the years I became an expert at it. I can see that now."

"I hope your counselor has helped you realize that you deserve to be loved, Kathryn."

"She's working on it. But, that's not what I want to confess to you. In some ways I used you the same way I did Mark. You were my first officer and forced to take second place to my job and the demands of the crew. I discouraged potential alien suitors by letting them believe that we were a couple, and I used your friendship to keep me from being so lonely."

He shrugged. "I knew that. I never had a problem with it."

She sat down and took his hand. "But I was completely dishonest with you. Instead of talking to you about how I felt, I just turned a blind eye and made you believe that friendship was our only option."

"Friendship was our only option, Kathryn, and protocol was an important reminder of that. You couldn't afford to become involved with anyone from the crew because of our unique situation. Besides, you felt guilty enough about stranding the ship out there in the first place. You would have felt even worse if you were happy while the rest of the crew longed for home."

She shook her head. "While I can't dispute a word you've said, that's not what I'm talking about." She took a deep breath, as he'd heard her do dozens of times when taking a calculated risk, and then she looked him in the eye with her usual courage. "The truth is that I loved you too much."

Chakotay stared at her, not sure he'd heard correctly. "You what?"

"I've thought about telling you this indirectly, because, after all this time, I know that you no longer feel the way you did about me on New Earth. But, then I realized that it was time to be honest with you, even if I was setting myself up for a painful rejection."

He was so stunned that her words made no sense to him. All he heard were the words she'd spoken a few moments earlier echoing in his brain. "You loved me . . . too much."

"I was happier when I was with you than I'd been with anyone else in years, but, you see, you were the one person I didn't deserve to love. You were the person I thought I had to give up to atone for Dad and Justin's deaths and for the seven years of exile I'd forced upon Voyager's crew. Not having you was my punishment, my penance. While I can't undo the past, Chakotay, I can be honest with you. I meant only to punish myself, yet I hurt you in the process. I'm sorry for that, and I ask you to forgive me."

He was still confused. "You want me to forgive you because you loved me too much?"

"I want you to forgive me for being dishonest about my feelings and hurting you in the process."

"When were you dishonest?"

"There is such a thing as a sin of omission. I never told you how I felt."

"There was never an appropriate time for that, Kathryn. You were never malicious or calculating or manipulative--or at least not without good cause." He smiled and took her hand again. "There's nothing to forgive, that I can see."

Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm sorry if you've felt conflicted without reason."

"I admit that your behavior confused me in the Delta Quadrant. But once I was home," he held her hand in both of his, "once I discovered the secrets of your past, the experiences that influenced your life, I came to admire and respect you more than ever. After your accident on Tau Ceti, it's a miracle you were able to return to active duty, much less work your way up the ranks to captain. And there's no doubt that you're the best captain I've ever served with, Kathryn, and the best friend I've ever had."

"I'm glad to know that." Nervous, she pulled her hand away and focused her attention on piling up the empty coffee mugs and pie plates onto the tray. "You're my best friend, too."

Chakotay volunteered to carry the heavy tray into the house, pausing to let her open the door into the kitchen. "You know, our text messages these last few months have helped me to know you better."

"You feel that way, too?" she asked as she held the kitchen door open for him.

"I found myself falling for you all over again. The only other time I can remember us being so open and honest with each other is when we were stranded on New Earth." He stepped into the kitchen and placed the tray by the sink. "Maybe, for once, we'll been able to put aside the habits we formed as Voyager's command team and . . . Kathryn?" He looked for her, but she had stayed on the porch. Leaving the tray untouched, he returned to the porch where she was sitting on the sofa, staring into the distance. "What's wrong?"

She was quiet a long time before she finally spoke. "When Admiral Janeway arrived on Voyager, I couldn't imagine anything that would make me break the temporal prime directive and change the past." She shifted to face him, tears in her eyes. "But I know now that I would do anything to keep from losing you."

"Losing me?" He sat down beside her, gently turning her to face him. "I'm right here, Kathryn."

"We were more like a brother and sister during the last few years on Voyager. And you moved on to . . . ." She looked away, unable to say Seven of Nine's name. "You moved on."

"What are you talking about? Are you referring to Seven?" When she nodded, he said, "Kathryn, Seven and I broke up almost a year ago. And I haven't seen anyone since."

She sniffled and looked up at him. "You haven't?"

"The more I've learned about all you've been through and overcome in your life--the more I've admired you. My feelings haven't changed, Kathryn."

"Really?"

He lifted her face so that he could smile into her eyes. "I love you. I always have."

She sobbed and leaned forward, resting her forehead on his shoulder. "Oh, Chakotay, I love you, too."

For a long while he held her as she cried, and he soothed her with soft words and gentle caresses. Then, when she finally pulled away, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and watched her dry her eyes and blow her nose, a grin on his face. "Was that so hard to admit?" he teased her.

She gave him a sad, crooked smile. "You wouldn't think so, but it was."

He laughed and started to reply when they were interrupted by a puppy that had managed to climb the back steps, solved the mystery of the porch's doggie door, and now jumped triumphantly against their legs, a very vocal female pup who had decided she needed some human affection.

"Well, who is this?"

Kathryn shook her head in mock disapproval. "That's the lover--I call her Annabelle. She never seems to tire of attention." Kathryn picked up the puppy and handed her to him. "I've never thought to ask you whether you like dogs."

"I love dogs, especially this one," he replied as the tiny bundle put her front paws on his chest and tried to wash his face with her wet pink tongue.

Kathryn chuckled as she retrieved the pup and sent her back out the door, pausing to secure it with a sliding panel. "So what do you think? Is Annabelle the keeper?"

Chakotay, who had followed her to the door, took her into his arms again. "I think Annabelle's perfect, on one condition."

"What would that be?" she asked as she snuggled into his chest.

"I get to help housebreak her."

"I think it's the best idea I've heard in years." Kathryn looked up at him, and he leaned down to give her a gentle kiss. She sighed as the kiss ended, and for a few moments they stood quietly holding each other, enjoying the closeness they both needed. "I can't make any promises, Chakotay. I'm fighting nearly twenty years of habit and conditioning, and the counselors tell me that I might never be the person I was before."

"Who would want to be twenty-two again, Kathryn?" he asked her in all seriousness. "Surviving the accident the way you did and experiencing your relationships with Justin and Mark have helped make you the person you are today. No one can live forty years without carrying the burdens of pain and loss in their lives--I think it's wrong to try." He smiled at her sadly. "Besides, I have just as many emotional scars as you do."

"I can't promise that I'll ever be able to . . . ." She looked away, and then started over. "I can't make any promises that the past won't continue to haunt me, and I would rather spend the rest of my life alone than use anyone else the way I did Mark."

"Let's just take this one day at a time."

"All right." She nodded and settled against him gratefully. "You mean the world to me, Chakotay. I can't imagine how sad my life would be without your support and friendship."

They returned to the sofa and their conversation drifted to other issues--her impending return to work, his scheduled trips off-planet, their determination to keep the lines of communication open and to be together whenever possible. He enjoyed being close to her and struggled to keep from being too optimistic about the direction the conversation had taken. If he knew anything about Kathryn, it was that she skirted commitment with the skill of an escape artist.

They grew silent, and as the sun set, the chill of the evening made them seek each other's warmth. The mood shifted as she turned to him and gave him a gentle kiss, studying his face with a tender look that made it nearly impossible for him to breathe. He pulled her onto his lap and shivered as she buried her face in his neck.

"Chakotay, I wish I could offer you a heart that had been miraculously restored to mint condition, but I don't think that can happen. My heart's been broken, and even if your tender loving care has helped put it back together, the scars will always remain."

"Give me your heart?" His voice was thick with emotion and his own heart seemed to be in his throat. He wondered what it was about her words and the tone of her voice that struck him as being so curious. And then he knew--vulnerability and openness and apprehension. All the barriers that had separated them were down, at last, and this was truly Kathryn, the gentle and hesitant woman who had been buried beneath protocol, habit, and denial for too many years. He said, "Do you mean that?"

"If you'll have it," she whispered, a clear tone of hesitation in her voice. "I'd understand if you decided I wasn't worth the trouble."

"Kathryn," he said, astonished that she would question his devotion after all these years, "I love you the way you are, scars and all. You couldn't do anything to make me love you more." He paused, remembering Gretchen describing her daughter's overwhelming need to succeed. He remembered the story of a small Kathryn trying to gain her father's attention, a young woman trying to please Justin, a heartrending silver-haired Kathryn making things better by altering her past. He couldn't let her feel that she had anything to prove to him. "Kathryn, you don't earn the right to be loved."

"I don't?"

He looked down at her, gently smoothing a stray lock of hair from her face. "Love is given, not earned."

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. "Given, not earned?"

"True love is unconditional. You promise to do your best in our relationship and to love me as much as you can, and I promise the same. You forgive me for my shortcomings, and I forgive you for yours." He saw the look of hesitation on her face and smiled. "Can you love me that way?"

"I can try, but . . . it's different."

"That's okay. You'll come to understand what I mean with time."

"And you'll love me the same way? Broken heart and all?"

"I will, Kathryn. I do. My heart has been broken, too, and is just as scarred as yours. In so many ways, we're made for each other. It's no wonder that I love you."

"Oh, I love you, too." She looked up and smiled at him, tears or relief and joy spilling down her cheeks, and Chakotay let himself believe that it was true.

"Please don't cry," he begged her as he kissed the tears away.

"I'll do my best to love you for the rest of my life," she promised.

"That's all I want, Kathryn. That's all I've ever dreamed of."

They enjoyed the closeness of their embrace for awhile, exchanging kisses and relishing the passion that was gradually building between them after so many years of denial. At last, she kissed him deeply and the need for rational thought seemed to disappear. Without a word, she stood up and took his hand, leading him through the empty house, up the stairs, and into her bedroom.

The next hours were burned into his memory as a dream come true--Kathryn free at last to love him, to act upon her feelings, and to be the passionate woman he'd always known was imprisoned behind the captain's façade. The love in her eyes and in her quiet words as they embraced filled him with unspeakable joy. They gloried in their newfound intimacy until finally, sated and spent, they drifted into a blissful sleep.

Much later, Chakotay awoke and held Kathryn in his arms as he listened to her breathing and to the comforting, quiet sounds of the night--the steady ticking of the grandfather clock, the hum of the furnace, the wind gusting against the house. He at last had time to think. In spite of all his efforts, he realized that he would probably never fully understand this woman who had intrigued him from the first moment he'd met her.

Yet, learning of the tragedies of her life made him love her with an even greater intensity, one that came from shared pain and struggle, from similar experiences in overwhelming personal disaster and suffocating guilt. Both of them had been through hell and back, and they'd come through with their heads held high, triumphant, defiant, and determined to carry on. They had been damaged by life, yes, but for them, it was not enough to be simply be alive. They were undaunted, optimistic, and confident about the future. And they were stronger together.

He looked down at her tangled auburn hair and no longer doubted what he had always suspected to be true--that the two of them belonged together. And even if their broken hearts might prevent the "happily ever after" of a fairly tale, he was satisfied with the reality of their relationship, and, in fact, he preferred it. He was sure they would be good for each other no matter what the future held.

The clock struck twelve, and Kathryn sighed and looked up at him, surprised to find him awake and smiling at her. She burrowed her face into his chest, throwing an arm around him as if she thought he might leave. "Stay here with me this weekend?" she mumbled.

"I thought you'd never ask," he teased. "There's nowhere else in the universe I'd rather be than right here with you."

"Good." She chuckled and shifted to put her head on her hand. "Do you remember that legend you made up on New Earth? The one about the warriors?"

He felt a blush crawling up his neck. "It's a little embarrassing to think about that story, Kathryn. I wasn't sure how you'd react if I pledged my life to you right out loud."

She cupped his face in her hand. "I was so touched by your words, Chakotay, and I thought of them so often when we returned to Voyager, especially in times of trouble." She shifted so she could kiss him, smiling down at him as her eyes grew thoughtful with the memory. "You said I brought you peace."

"That hasn't changed. I still feel at peace when I'm with you."

"You've brought me peace, too, because you've helped me come to terms with the tragedies in my life." She laid her head on his chest with a sigh. "Our relationship has been special from the first day we met, Chakotay. I am just so thankful that you didn't give up on me."

"I didn't know how to stop loving you."

She yawned, her voice heavy with sleep. "All things considered, the Caretaker did me a favor, stranding us out there together."

"I feel the same way," he chuckled. "I was hooked from day one."

"Well, I fought my attraction to you for years. Too many years."

Chakotay thought back to her promotion party the previous summer, when Admiral Paris had congratulated him for escaping Kathryn's charms. It had been the first of several conversations that had helped him discover the mystery of her past, but he'd known instinctively that Paris was wrong, that he hadn't escaped Kathryn as much as she had steered clear of him, much to his chagrin. "You know, Kathryn, I think I'm a lucky man for not escaping from you."

"Escaping me?" She smiled against his chest. "It took eight years, mister, but I finally have you in custody."

"And then some." He cradled her closer. "I'm just hoping for a life sentence."

"Maybe we can work out a plea bargain later."

She drifted off to sleep as he held her, but he was too buoyant with joy to relax, too thrilled to be holding her in his arms. Through her bedroom window, he could see the stars of the Milky Way, and he wondered how many times she had stood in Voyager's ready room staring wistfully toward the Alpha Quadrant. How many times had he watched her, wondering what it was from her past that caused the emotional reticence that seemed so out of place with her naturally outgoing personality?

Now, looking back toward the Delta Quadrant from her childhood home, he finally understood that he had been perplexed by two separate secrets that she had kept from him. There had been the accident and all the guilt she carried from it, but there had also been a second, more personal and potentially volatile secret--she'd loved him too much. When she'd admitted this to him earlier in the day, his heart had almost burst with happiness. At last, he had the final missing piece in his understanding of her perplexing behavior.

Reassured and blissful, he felt himself relaxing against her warmth, gratified to hold her close at long last, and, as if sensing his need for reassurance, Kathryn sighed and gave him a kiss on the neck, settling against him with a sigh of satisfaction. He smiled and closed his eyes at last, and as he slowly fell asleep, he was struck with an encouraging thought. Maybe, he dreamed, as the shared warmth of their love enveloped him, maybe "happily ever after" could come true after all.

The end.


End file.
